At the End of All Things - beehoony (2024)

Chapter 1: The Child

Chapter Text

As a rule, most Jedi were not interested in droids. If the Force moved in every living thing, then droids were just so much dead space to them. Most would have been surprised to find out that there was a droid workshop in the temple, despite the number of training remotes that were damaged in the course of a single day's training, not to mention cleaning droids, protocol droids and so forth.

There was a lesson in there somewhere, Revan thought as he sucked on a burnt fingertip, but the rather more immediate one was to always check the power cells before testing the fuses. That was a small, painfully obvious addition to his mental checklist, which started with ensuring that the blaster safety was on before cleaning out the barrel or checking the targeting algorithm.

Burnt fingers aside, he liked the droid workshop. The only person who worked there was Darar, a large taciturn man who was built like a plasteel cylinder, and who was not prone to rambling monologues about the dangers of the Dark Side. His thick fingers could make wonders happen with a circuit board and some careful welding, but he was nonplussed by how Revan kept turning up like a bad credit to watch him work. Darar gave him a pile of broken droids to tinker with, and when Revan assembled all the working parts into a single remote that worked (which was the logical thing to do, even if it beeped the Republic anthem while shooting), Darar began leaving increasingly complex parts on the workbench that Revan had claimed, as well as the occasional droid service manual and textbook of electronics.

Despite his own presence there, it came as a surprise when one day, he went to get the solder laser, only to find a small, defiant face staring back at him from inside the locker, sharp with the smell of grease. The girl was dressed in the simple robes of an apprentice although she was scarcely more than a youngling. Revan rarely paid much attention to the younger apprentices—he was about twelve, after all, and would soon become a Padawan.

"Hello," he said.

"I'm not going back," she declared, dark eyes daring him to disagree.

"Well, I don't know where you came from, so I can't very well make you go back there." Revan wondered if this was how Darar had felt when he started hanging around. It was his territory, a haven where he didn't have to think about the Jedi code, or about anything really besides the droid in front of him.

She glanced at his identical robes before regarding him with suspicion. "Do you really not know?" she asked incredulously, and he had the odd sense that he was being cross-examined, much as the masters occasionally did when some new prank came to light.

"What do you think?" he shot back.

"You're an apprentice too," she said in an accusatory tone. She was smart enough to pick up on the obvious.

"I am."

"Then you do know."

"The temple is a big place. Would you like to come out?"

"Maybe. If you don't make me go back."

It was maddening to try to reason with a child, Revan thought with despair. "I'm here and not down there," he pointed out.

This was apparently acceptable. She wriggled out of the locker and looked around with avid curiosity. Darar refused to even turn his head in their direction, lest she take it as encouragement and decided to stay as well.

"I'm Revan," he offered. "What's your name?"

She dropped perfunctorily into the bow that they used for elders. "Meetra," she replied in a small voice. "Meetra Surik."

He bowed back to her as an equal would have, and her own bow deepened, the corners of her mouth tugging upward shyly in a way that suggested she had been chided for it many times.

"Nice to meet you, Meetra. Want to see what I'm working on? Just grab the solder laser behind you."

The smile finally broke free. "What is it?"

*

Being summoned before the masters was invariably bad. There was usually a lot of finger wagging, lecturing and prescribed meditation that followed. They didn’t approve of adding colour to the water to the Room of a Thousand Fountains, or building a small droid that beeped loudly whenever anyone said the word ‘Force’, or scaling the pillars in the atrium. In fact, Revan was hard pressed to name one thing that the masters approved of that wasn’t related to practicing the teachings without asking inconvenient questions.

This time though, Meetra had been dragged off without him, and that was something else altogether. Her blank terror had clawed at him until he had managed to sneak his way to the hallway outside the council chambers. He stood before the large double doors, wondering what he was going to do, and the doors slid open with a hiss to reveal Master Vandar. “Come in, young Revan. We have much to discuss.”

Meetra turned a tear-streaked face to him and he felt the tug again, drawing him to her side. “What do you want with Meetra?” he asked sullenly.

“You need not fear for her. We only wish to talk. She is a most exceptional young lady, as I’m sure you’re aware,” Master Vandar beamed, his ears low and relaxed.

Master Vrook grumbled, “Not all of us are of that opinion.”

Revan’s own master leaned forward. “Do not be so quick to dismiss what you do not understand. None of us sent for my Padawan, yet here he is.”

“That proves little. As we are all aware, the lad is up to mischief more often than not. The girl is obviously not suited to the life of a Jedi—emotions already run strong in this one.”

Revan sensed Meetra’s distress, but to her credit, she didn’t move a muscle, although she did glare balefully at a point on the marble floor, that by rights should have started sizzling. He had received his share of those looks. He shrugged, trying to change the topic. “Meetra’s very smart. She’s really good with droids.”

“Not exactly a prime prerequisite for being a good Jedi.”

“We could always send her to the Jedi corps. She could train as a technician.”

“The child is just seven years old; she is far too young for anyone to call such things.”

“We should hear his side of the story. Tell us, what would your opinion be if we were to send Surik to the academy on Dantooine?”

“And where would I be?” he asked before his brain managed to wrest back control of his mouth.

The masters were watching them very carefully. His own master answered in a neutral voice, “You will continue your studies here on Coruscant, under my tutelage.”

A small voice said defiantly, “I do not know why you ask him. It is I that you wish to send away, and you have already made up your minds.” Meetra raised her chin.

“I hope that you realise that we do this for both your sakes. This...bond between you is very irregular for those at your stage of training. Such things often form over years, between master and apprentice, not within months. It is for the best that you are separated.”

Meetra’s rosebud mouth turned downwards, and she cast a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. He tried to calm her, but he could barely calm himself. He made a small gesture at her, and they both bowed.

“You are both dismissed. Surik, pack your belongings. You will leave for Dantooine tomorrow.”

They walked back towards the apprentice quarters without speaking, side by side with a little distance between them. They came to a stop outside Meetra’s dormitory.

“Bye. Guess we won’t see each other again.”

Revan checked the corridors before giving her a quick hug. He would get in trouble if someone was watching the security cameras, but so be it. “Don’t think you’ve gotten rid of me that easily. Promise me that you’ll write?”

Her small smile appeared, more familiar to him than his own face, and she nodded quickly, before darting through the doors, leaving him with one last dark-eyed look. “May the Force be with you,” she called as the doors closed.

“And with you,” he said, a little too late.

Chapter 2: A Disturbance in the Force

Chapter Text

Stories of old Jedi could be so boring. She was going to get quizzed about how and why this person or another fell to the dark side, but they were all blurring together into a history of how people did silly things. A yawn overpowered her, which was fine, as she was in the library and not in meditation, even if Atris shot a disapproving look at her. Everyone yawned in the library except Atris.

When she was done with rubbing twenty circles into each eye, there was a message icon blinking on her datapad. She opened it, fully expecting some half-hearted chiding from Atris, but the sender's name came up as a blank. The message itself read: Finally got this working. Miss me yet?

She checked behind her before she bent her head over her datapad, letting her eyes drift shut and opening her mind to the galaxy, listening hard. Ever so faintly, in a place that was both close to her heart and a great distance away, there was...a familiar smug satisfaction. The last time she had felt it, all the colour crystals of the apprentice lightsabers had mysteriously been switched around. Meetra bit back a grin before she could be questioned, and typed back: About time, took you long enough. Did I miss you? What do you think, you gizka?

-That hurts my feelings. Gizkas are hardly expert slicers. The workshop is quiet without you. And boring.

-This whole planet is quiet. You'd be bored here too.

-Nah, we'd make it fun.

-There's fountains here too. I think they'd be better with colour. Like last time, remember?

Meetra had to clap her hands over her mouth to hold in the giggles before she hit send.

-Of course I remember, Meemee. Do you have any friends to help you with that?

-None as fun as you.

-Tell me about them.

*

Over the years, words flew back and forth through the vacuum, to datapad screens hidden in a pocket or under a blanket. A bond like this was not so easily broken, not when they still shaped each other's thoughts. It wasn't all frivolous—sometimes there was an interesting textbook or essay on the Force. Few others shared their love of droids, which had led them to programming, and then to slicing. Together, they eventually figured out how to open a secret audio channel. When Revan finally landed on Dantooine, his knight's robes still freshly starched, Meetra was waiting at the landing pad, hair bound in a Padawan's braid. He had been wondering if it was just his imagination that the bond was pulling at him inexorably as the ship approached Dantooine, but her presence answered that question.

She smiled as he stared at her. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Nah, just thinking that you've grown, but you're still a stumpy gizka." He reached over and tugged her braid.

She slapped his hand away. "I'm still growing. Maybe I'll get taller than you."

He had five or so inches on her, and she was already sixteen. "Doubt it, Mee." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder as he heard the heavy tread down the landing ramp. "This overgrown oaf is Alek."

Alek grinned at Meetra. "And this skinny kid must be Meetra. Nice to finally meet you. Revan's always going on and on about you."

"That's because all you talk about is lightsabers and sparring, while she actually reads books," Revan said affably. "We have to go meet the masters first, Mee—I'll come find you later."

"If you can."

"I can find you anywhere in the galaxy."

*

Training finished late that evening, which meant that the twin moons were faintly visible in the dusk sky and the fields were loud with the call of insects looking for a mate. She didn't need to turn around to know that it was Revan crunching through the tall grass.

“You know, I think the sunsets on Dantooine are my favourite in the galaxy.” He came to a stop beside her, but she kept her gaze fixed on the horizon and hummed noncommittally. “There’s just something about Dantooine’s moons.”

“What do you want, Revan?”

“I sensed a disturbance in the Force—ow!” He rubbed his arm where she had punched him. “See? Disturbance. Vrook wasn’t kidding when he said that you were picking fights.”

“That would have barely tickled, given Kavar just about killed me in training. Three hours straight, dual wielding, Niman form versus a dozen training remotes and Kavar lobbing his powers at me. I feel like I was a floor mat under a bantha herd stampede,” Meetra replied, stretching with a grimace. “As for picking fights, Vrook’s Padawan decided to criticise the outcome of the Bindo trial and make loud declarations that Bindo should have been summarily executed and made an example of, that sort of thing. It’s ancient history anyway, but I dared to disagree with him.”

“Disagree? I believe your encounter was described as ‘heated debate’.” Revan said with a chuckle.

“At least you’re finding this amusing.” She tried to sound annoyed, but Revan had an uncanny knack for finding the humour in any situation, usually at someone else’s expense.

“When are you going to learn not to quarrel with someone who squawks like a hungry mynock?”

“But he was—“

“That was a rhetorical question, Mee. I don’t disagree with you, but you should be focusing on preparing for the trials.”

“Assuming Master Vrook doesn’t tell the council that I’m not ready.”

“He won’t. And once you’re a knight, then you’ll be out of his hair.” Revan chuckled at his own joke.

“Now that’s just being cruel,” she said with a laugh, before the reality of the upcoming trials suddenly loomed over her, a sheer cliff waiting for her to scale it with bare hands. “I don’t know if I really am ready…”

“You are. I passed my trials when I was your age, and you’ve never let me outdo you in anything, so you’d best get on with it this year, lest you have to pass it at the decrepit age of twenty-two instead. Besides, you keep complaining about having to brush and braid your hair. Get it over and done with then you can emulate Master Vrook’s impeccable sense of style.”

Meetra groaned. “Revan, did you fly all the way to Dantooine for the sole purpose of irritating me?”

“This time and every other time. And for the sunsets as well, of course.” He slung a companionable arm around her shoulder. “Feeling better?”

“You’d best be glad that the Jedi Code expressly forbids anger.”

“It’s all part of your training, right? You’re going to be so good at letting go of your anger.”

“You’re impossible. I can’t believe that I’ve put up with you for so many years.”

Revan turned to look at her and any retort seemed to die on his lips. He stared at her, surprise and epiphany in his eyes. Through the bond, she glimpsed herself through his eyes for a brief vertiginous moment, grinning in the fading light, then she heard the thought, she’s grown up and she’s—

It abruptly cut off as Revan withdrew the arm from her shoulder. “It’s rude to eavesdrop, Mee.”

“It’s not eavesdropping when you’re the one shouting at me. And I’m what now?”

He put a finger to his lips. “Guess.”

“I’m…still the brat from the droid workshop.”

“Close, but not quite. Come on, let’s head back before we get eaten by kath hounds.”

“Won’t you protect me, famous knight?”

“Protect yourself, Surik, you’re more than capable.”

“You’re no fun.”

“I’m more fun than anyone else around here. You said so yourself.” Revan put a hand on her shoulder to spin her around to the direction of the Enclave, then started walking.

“I need some dinner to shore up my patience.”

“Walk faster or Alek will eat it all before we get there.”

“I don’t know how he puts up with you either.”

“Neither he nor I know the answer to that. Keep walking, Mee, you’re grumpy enough when you’re well fed, Force forbid that we let you go hungry.”

Chapter 3: The Knack

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"Have you seen Meetra?"

Atris looked up from her datapad. From the looks of things, she was cataloging the treatises on the effects of the Force on minds, so it came as no surprise that Meetra was nowhere to be found in the library. "She said she was going to practice her lightsaber forms, so I imagine that's where you'll find her."

"Blasting the training droids into smithereens?" he asked flippantly.

Atris' pale brows knit and her lips puckered like someone drew a purse string tight around her face. "I doubt it. As a matter of fact, she has been going quite well since you were last here."

"That's good to hear." It was one of two things: either their mutual friend's pazaak face was getting better, or Atris did not know Meetra half as well as she thought she did.

He found her alone in one of the training rooms. The windowless walls were heavily reinforced to withstand damage from stray lightsaber strikes and deflected blaster bolts, not that it mattered when her lightsaber hilts had been left on the floor at a careless angle. He nudged one, then another with his foot to straighten them, half expecting a snide comment that failed to materialise. She was moving through the first form with empty hands and closed eyes, the lines of her body and steady breath belying the agitation that he sensed from her.

"Were you planning to say hello, or to just stand there and stare?" She brushed some hair out of her face without opening her eyes. It had grown out since he had last seen her, but was still too short to pull back, instead sticking out at awkward angles around her shoulders and tickling her nose. In that one movement, he read a good deal of regret into how she had gleefully rid herself of her Padawan braid.

He clicked his tongue. "Practicing the first form without a lightsaber is for the younglings."

She continued moving as she spoke. "I am being treated as one, so why not? They talk at me of blocking out the war, and of seeking peace in myself." Her eyes snapped open. "Have you spoken to them?"

"The Council were adamant. They will not be going to war. Kavar looked like he had a mynock chewing on his power cables, but he will do as they say."

Her movements dragged to a stop. "I'm not surprised. It must be hard for him."

"No harder than it is for you, I suspect." He threw her main hand lightsaber hilt at her. "Let's spar. Two blades, in honour of your favourite master."

"Despite what Kavar thinks, I never was any good with using both—" she broke off into a grunt as she threw up her lightsaber in a parry. His lightsabers clashed against hers, first one then another. She spun away after deflecting his blows, wise enough to avoid directly pitting her strength against his. They had danced like this hundreds of times, and being the more experienced of the two, as well as stronger and taller, he always led. She could have protested that he had an unfair advantage—which she occasionally did when she was feeling facetious—but she could read him like a book. He pushed her all the harder for it. Before long, she was flushed and panting, and he noted that her footwork was getting sloppy. When she overextended, he seized the chance to catch her blade between both of his.

"Surrender," he rumbled grandiosely, unable to keep the grin off his face.

"Never!" she declared before she extinguished her lightsaber. He tipped forward, off-balance from the sudden lack of resistance, barely killing his own lightsabers before he killed her.He need not have worried, because she had already pirouetted on one foot and she helped him on his way down with a kick to the back of one knee. He twisted and grabbed at her as he fell, catching one elbow in a vice grip. They both tumbled to the ground, limbs tangled as she laughed breathlessly. No one else among the stars who could catch him off balance like that.

"I could have hurt you," he said accusingly, his heart pounding at how close he had come and at how close he was.

Her nose scrunched up as she grinned. "You would never do that."

"While my ego appreciates your estimation of my reflexes, I’d rather not have us both end up as the subjects of the next training safety holovid.”

A hand on his chest gave him a firm shove. He took the hint and shifted his weight so that she could get to her feet. She offered him a hand up with an ironic smile. "Oh Master," she said in a teasing voice. "I'll be careful. But I trust you, Revan."

"I know, Mee," he said slowly. "That's why I'm here."

She frowned at his tone. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to help the Republic."

"Despite the Council?"

"Yes."

She mulled this over, chewing on her lower lip. "Are you certain?"

"We felt the fall of Cathar together, Mee. The Mandalorians are a strong foe; the Republic waited too long before engaging them, and now they are paying the price."

"You're not wrong," she said quietly. "I take it that you think the Council thinks the Republic has time that it does not have?"

"There won't be anyone left for them to gloat to about being right, much less to enact their secret, brilliant plan," Revan said harshly.

"I guess that you do not plan on going alone."

"I am but one Jedi—"

"—and this war is being fought across the galaxy." She finished his sentence as she often did.

"Will you come with me?"

"If you will have me." She closed her eyes again. "If you have need of a mediocre Jedi."

"I have always needed you," he said, and they both knew that it was the truth.

*

They would all make far greater sacrifices for the war effort, he told himself, but he still felt a twinge of guilt as he watched her make her way towards the front of the gathered Jedi with a smile here, a touch on a shoulder there. She had not wanted this, but she had no idea how much weight her opinion carried.

Attachments are dangerous for Jedi. Despite that, they allowed friendships and the bond between master and apprentice, blurring the lines that they themselves drew in the sand. Where did a relationship veer into danger? Ultimately, this was the subject of contention in the endless debate between the Masters about her ‘knack’. Even they were not immune to it, nor were the other knights and Padawans.

He hadn't been, either.

So he now watched Alek ask her, would she join them?

Her quiet voice rang with conviction. "I do not want to go to war. I do not want to kill. But our inaction will allow a greater evil to occur, and we will be as guilty as the Mandalorians if we stand aside and let them commit genocide. I cannot—I will not cover my eyes and my ears while the galaxy burns."

Ripples of uncertainty spread through the Jedi. Someone murmured agreement, someone else said it aloud, yet another shouted it. Revan saw Kavar near the door, watching his favourite student with his arms folded and his face tight. The master finally slipped out without a word.

Revan smiled.

Chapter 4: Easy

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He was there when she cut down her first man. The Republic's generals had no idea what to do with the Jedi, and so Revan had suggested that they lead the assault on a Mandalorian supply base. The Republic dropship pilot had offered them jet packs and had been politely turned down.

Revan was the first out of the ramp, and she felt her own stomach rise as he jumped, then she saw him running, both his lightsabers ablaze and in motion as klaxons began shrieking across the compound. Alek followed almost immediately and she too leapt from the ship, hitting the hard ground in a roll. A Mandalorian, nameless and faceless in his armour, pointed his blaster rifle at her. She felt the Force flow through her, and then she was running, deflecting blaster bolts without a second thought until she was upon him and she brought her lightsaber around in a two handed sweep. It left a molten mess of armour in his side. He scrabbled for his pike, but she brought her lightsaber up and under his helmet. And he died.

It was the sound of a lamp being smashed, and his pain left sunspots in the darkness.

Revan was at her side in moments, and a Mandalorian who had thought to take advantage of her hesitation lost an arm before he lost his life to Revan's lightsabers. She deflected a blaster bolt meant for Revan back at its source before retching at the stench of burnt flesh and the acrid smell of molten plasteel. Revan grasped her arm and dragged her into cover. He pushed her into the ground, shielding her with his body as a frag grenade ricocheted off the low wall and exploded. Before the dust had even settled, they were surging over the wall with no more signal than a quick glance. She stunned the grenadier, filling his head with white noise as Revan bounded over to him. The Force ebbed out of of the grenadier as he died, but Revan was already moving again. Without needing anything as difficult as words, they moved back to back, ready to take on the galaxy.

*

The atmosphere on the cruiser was ebullient. They had pulled off the first victory in months, and with minimal losses. Revan had the Jedi paraded in front of the soldiers as a morale exercise and the cheers suggested that it was working.

Alek was lapping up the attention, but she hung back, forcing smiles and shaking hands. Revan moved through the crowd like a firaxis shark, all strength and power. This is only a taste of what the Jedi will bring to the dejarik board, he said to them. When we look back on this war, this will be the day that we turned it around. This is the start of our victory.

She did what was needed. She praised the courage of the squads that followed them, admired their tenacity in fighting a war so far from their homes. She was exhausted by the time they finally went to the storage compartment that had been hastily converted into temporary quarters.

Alek's long shadow fell across her sleeping bag as she spread out a fresh set of clothing. "So, Revan had to come rescue you like a damsel in distress? It would be best not to make a habit of it. We don't have space for weaklings here."

"He watched my back," she said, her voice as steady as her hand, her convictions still unrattled, "As I watch his. Hardly anything to write home about, unless he's never looked out for you."

"I'll keep that in mind the next time you need me to save your arse, Alek." Revan sauntered up behind her. "Knowing you, we won't have long to wait."

Alek backed off with a scowl, unable or unwilling to lock horns with Revan. Revan remained, his warm, fierce presence like sunlight on her face.

"I'm not a killer," she whispered.

"I know. That's what separates us from them. We just do what we have to, and no more."

"Maybe it will get easier."

His mouth tightened. "Maybe," he said mildly, but she felt his uncertainty as he added in a quiet voice, "Or maybe it will get too easy." He looked at her again the same way that he had in the midst of battle, before he mussed her hair and told her to get some sleep.

Chapter 5: War

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They studied war.

Revan ordered them to capture Mandalorian tech where possible, especially ships that could be retrofitted for reconnaissance. When they finally captured a mostly intact basilisk war droid, they pulled it apart to study the shield generators, the exhaust ports, mechanical joints, anything that should be prioritised by the targeting algorithms. The memory and processor cores as well as the weapons that were capable of piercing a destroyer's hull were all meticulously examined to see if they could be reverse engineered, or failing that, jammed.

Back on the ship, she hung around the armoury and watched the gruff arms master from over his shoulder with considerable interest. She had built her lightsaber and knew it outside out, but the Jedi did not bother with any other weapons, which seemed to be a very narrow view of a universe that contained a startling number of implements for maiming and/or killing. She toyed with swords, batons, pikes, pistols, rifles, assembling them and breaking them down, aiming and swinging, until she knew exactly how much Force she needed to pull each weapon out of a man's grasp, how to tip him off balance so his gun fired at the unfortunate person next to him, how to make his ammunition chamber explode in his face.

She learned about fighting in groups, which was a hazardous prospect when they had twenty lightsabers between them. They practiced formations, coordinating their defence until they were on top of Mandalorian bunkers, then they practiced cutting off parts of the enemy without amputating each other. Revan began sending her out with her own strike teams—he was just one Jedi, and while Alek was fury made flesh in battle, he cared little for anyone accompanying him. She, on the other hand, paid attention to everything and everyone because the knowing might make the difference between life and death.And to her bemusem*nt, she found that within the space of a single mission, her teams fought like a well-oiled machine, using the code words that she taught them.

She learned from the admirals about orbital warfare, about which ship could do what and for how long.She watched the ugly space battles and called the admirals' attention to their ships' movements almost before they made them. She asked questions and left the admirals wondering why they hadn't thought of that themselves. She began making suggestions, and the fleet found themselves moving to her will, faster than they could communicate over comlink, each pilot knowing with perfect clarity where and when they needed to be. The gunners and bombers knew what to target with surgical precision: turrets, communication arrays, shield generators all fell sequentially under concentrated fire.

She read books about the next planet's geography in her bunk as the fleet chased the Mandalorians across the Outer Rim. The Republic had excellent planetary maps, and the sappers under her command found themselves busy with diverting the water supply of Mandalorian bases, undermining bridges, destroying supply routes, laying mines along assault paths and so forth. Her troops often found themselves looking down on the Mandalorian force from across a minefield and firing at will as the Mandalorians were funnelled through by a flanking party.

It didn't get easier. She just got better at it. She killed before she or hers could be killed. They dropped her on the glass craters that had been the stereb cities of Eres III, and she fought amongst the echoing deaths of the glazed skeletons underfoot. The Mandalorians added their death sounds to the cacophony, and no single death stood out anymore. She watched as the xoxin fields of Serocco were set alight, her fleet pinned down and unable to evacuate the cities nearby.

After Serocco, she told Revan, “The council were right in one way. The war is changing us, and not for the better.” They were alone in the command centre, studying the latest intelligence reports and planning the fleet’s next moves.

He considered his reply carefully. “The Mandalorians live for war, and they prove themselves against us. Against such an enemy, we are ourselves also tested, whether or not we wish it.” His smile did not reach his eyes. “In such things, one often finds the truth.”

“What truth have you found?” she asked. For all that she was standing next to him, he suddenly felt very distant. She had been needed elsewhere for progressively longer periods in the months before, but until this moment, she had not thought that they had grown apart.

He stared at her for a long moment before answering, his voice very quiet. “That you are stronger than you know.”

She was clicking through planetary displays on the map and her hand froze when Serocco came up, the fires of war visible from orbit. “Is this what you call strength?”

He came to stand beside her, calloused hand resting on hers for the space of a breath before he switched off the display. “Doing something terrible to avert a greater disaster? Yes.”

“It hasn’t become easier.”

“I didn’t think it would for you,” he said. “But that’s not the only truth that I’ve found, although perhaps I always knew this: I fight because I still have something to lose.” A blaze of emotion crackled through the bond.

“The whole Republic,” she answered, a little glib, aware that it was not what he meant but not ready for the truth behind his words.

The rueful smile of a person who had missed a carefully aimed shot spread across his face. “Let’s wrap up here. I know what we must do next.”

Chapter 6: The Fragile Thread

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It was easier without her there. She held all the deaths within her, a haunting darkness to her gaze that grew as the war wore on. More than once, when he met her eyes across the hologram, he wavered like a flame before the night breeze. Was there truly no other way to evacuate the planet? Must they prioritise defending the supply base over the nearby colony? The answers should have been clear, but she was a painful reminder of why he had gone to war and of what he had to sacrifice in playing the long game.

He had finally left her at the head of a fleet at the Outer Rim, when the Mandalorian push into the Coreward worlds was gaining traction. Before departing, he found some excuse to brief her one final time, one general to another, speaking of targeted planets, resource depots, military facilities and so forth, until he lapsed into silence, all too aware that it was time for him to go.

“Be careful out there,” she had said, which was what she said to every troop she deployed, even though he was the one who gave her orders.

“I’m always careful. We’ll see this through together.” She had tried to smile, and it was then that he gathered her into a tight embrace. “Mee, I—“

“I know.” She cupped his cheek with one hand, and he turned to press his lips against her palm before she pulled away. “May the Force be with you.”

“May the Force be with us all,” he answered, and he followed the path that the war had laid for him.

*

She rarely slept for more than an hour, waking through the night to check the intelligence logs and the radar. She knew that Revan was safe, so distant that sometimes she couldn't hear him over the sound of war.

Then he sent her to Dxun.

*

"Revan," she said tersely by way of greeting.

"Meetra. Report."

"It's raining. Is this a secure channel?" Someone in the background mumbled an affirmative. "The AA guns have been delayed by mud and the local wildlife snacking on it. The techs are working on it but until then we're sitting ducks. Scouts have not sighted the Mandalorian camp yet but there's mines all over the jungle."

There was a pause and the comm hissed loudly with static as the storm rumbled overhead.

"Take the moon. Whatever the cost. You have two days."

"That's impossible," she said flatly. "We'll lose half the division."

"That was an order. Rendezvous in one week. We need Onderon."

*

"General, the paths are all trapped. The Mandalorians have been digging into this moon for months. We'll be slaughtered!"

"You have your orders."

*

The dreams got worse after that. She ran before being speared through her chest. A sonic grenade left her vomiting to the sound of her ears ringing. The barrel of the blaster cannon turned towards her, and the bolt grazed her as she threw herself aside, searing her spine and leaving her crying out, helpless as the walker crunched through the jungle towards her. She stepped on something hard; one beep then the world ended in one blinding, explosive instant.

*

She watched Revan on the holonews with her troops. He spoke of the war with a passion in his eyes that the council would have feared. They would win this war. The Mandalorians' crimes would not go unanswered.

Her troops turned to her afterwards with a burning hope in their eyes, ignited by Revan's words, and it fell to her to fan them into an inferno. She reminded them of the price of blood and pain that they had paid. They fought for the fallen, for the worlds that fell before the onslaught had been stemmed.

No more planets have fallen in the past six months, she reminded them as their grim eyes stared at her. But they didn't want talk of protection. Now that the tide of battle had turned, they wanted the revenge that Revan had hinted at. She could feel the thrum of blood rising, demanding blood in return.

The Jedi Council feared war and emotion for reason, although perhaps they never dared to look in the face of their own fear.

She wanted to show them a different way.

So she spoke of what might...would come to pass. Parents, spouses, children, friends, teachers—Atris, Kavar — waited (Did they? Would they? To wait might be to forgive). They fought for the living on a thousand different planets. And when they came home, there would be lives to rebuild, worlds to make whole again.

"The galaxy will never be the same. We will never be the same. There will be scars, both seen and unseen. But we will live the lives that we fought for, free of the terrors of war. It will not be easy, but we will find peace. In our galaxy. In ourselves." She had tears in her eyes when she finished. Always too emotional. It was not the way of the Jedi. But as the heavy silence gave way to thunderous applause, she wondered if it was the way of the galaxy.

Surik! Surik! Surik!

It wasn't a lie if she believed it too.

"We will fight!" she shouted. "For a new life. For a new hope!"

*

They spoke over the comlink. It was the pragmatic thing to do: an audio transmission was easier to encrypt than a video transmission. He stopped saying her name, for it was quite obvious that he was talking to her when there was no one else on the comlink. She kept saying his, trying to remind him that he was more than a general, more than a strategist.

Somehow, it had been a year since she had last seen Revan.

They fought, and it was a cold war. She had been furious after Dxun, when he refused to answer about whether it had all been worth it. It was not her place to question, he said in a voice devoid of inflection (he only used that voice when he was in a rage, and never with her, not until now), and she answered with all the warmth of dark space that it was her place to keep her troops alive and win battles.

Somewhere along the way, she lost the fragile thread that had spanned the galaxy.

Somehow, somewhere, he became a stranger.

*

It was horrible to consider, and she had to wonder what sort of mind could conceive of the mass shadow generator. The tech spoke in a calm, soft voice, but there was something mad and ugly in his eyes when he confirmed that yes, everything within the weapon's range would be affected by the artificial gravitational well, and would be...crushed. Destroyed. Definitely, terminally incapacitated.

They were still fighting on too many fronts. The Republic's ranks were running thin. The newest recruits were hardly more than children. At that age, she had been a Padawan with a heavy braid and light heart, worried about nothing more than how to not fall asleep when Master Vandar led the afternoon meditation. And now she was leading these children to their deaths.

"Set up a secure channel to General Revan," she ordered. "Lieutenant Bao-Dur and I need to talk to him.

Chapter 7: Shooting Stars

Chapter Text

They didn't have a chance. They had pulled out of hyperspace to see the massed might of the Mandalorian fleet arrayed around Malachor V. She watched the hologram, speaking orders into the comlink as they fought a losing battle. She needed to think about formations and breaking through the cannon line before Revan arrived. She sent them to their deaths, drawing the Mandalorians closer to the surface. For now, every loss had to be no more than a flicker of the hologram.

"Try to raise General Revan again," she ordered. There was nothing but static while another cruiser disintegrated outside the viewing port.

"—Mandalorian scouting party. Can't make the jump to hyperspace—too close to the planet—need time."

There would be no reinforcements. The bulk of the Republic fleet was with him.

"All units, withdraw." Her chest tightened, but she added, "Red squadron, cover them."

There was a long pause before the reply. "Aye, aye, copy that. Red leader out."

They obeyed, even if they didn't know why. Lieutenant Bao-Dur had built the mass shadow generator, but only three people knew how Revan intended to use it. Alek had objected because the command had been given to her, but Revan had bluntly said that while Alek was better at swinging a lightsaber, she was the better commander. Even without Revan's forces, she still could salvage this. If she could time this right, the Mandalorian fleet would be reduced to stragglers.

At a price.

"I repeat, all units withdraw. Prepare to make the jump to hyperspace. Sending coordinates for rendezvous point." She clicked on the comlink again, but the last of the red squadron winked out on the hologram. Her finger slackened as she watched the Mandalorian cannons turning on her disengaging fleet. She risked a glance out of the viewport—a large Mandalorian colony lay somewhere on the planet, and there would be thousands of slaves on it.

They would end the war today, no matter the cost.

The lieutenant hit a button that added another layer to the hologram. Most of the Mandalorian ships were still in range of the mass shadow generator, but so were far too many of her own ships. Their own cruiser turned ponderously and the engines roared as the pilot hit the throttle.

May the Force be with you all, she thought.

“Activate the device.” She nodded at the lieutenant. The Zabrak bent his horned head over the console as he punched in the access codes.

She heard their silent screams in the cold vacuum of space as every ship in orbit was pulled towards the planet. She fell with them all, streaking across the sky of Malachor V like shooting stars.

*

He felt it from halfway across the galaxy. They screamed. Then the voices were abruptly cut off, leaving only an echoing silence. His senses returned slowly—the deep hum of the hyperdrive, the thud of cannon fire deflecting off shields, the crackle of the comms on the bridge. He was still upright by mere chance, gloved hands clenching a handrail to steady himself. Alek had slumped against a console, but he lurched back to his feet with a strange glaze over his eyes.

"General! General!" Revan recognised Admiral Karath's voice as he tried to clear his head. "The Jedi—"

There was nothing but emptiness where she had always been.Revan grasped the comlink. "Tell all ships with Jedi troops to disengage and head to Malachor V immediately. Deploy your fleet to provide cover fire." The admiral knew better than to argue, even if the losses would be heavy. He turned to his comms officer. "Get me General Surik."

"We've lost all contact with them, sir. I can't explain it."

"So she's done it." Alek’s laughter was harsh. "I didn't think she would."

"It's not the first time that you've been wrong, and it won't be the last," Revan said coldly. "Once we have arrived, locate Mandalore." He would end this—he had to—before he could seek her out and see if he had lost everything in this gamble.

Chapter 8: Belong

Chapter Text

She waited for Revan at the ramp, her officers saluting smartly when the door slid open to reveal him in full armour.He stopped short when he saw her, his shoulders shifting with a strange tension. "General Surik." Revan's voice from behind the mask was flat.

"Sir," she said after a brief pause, unused to that name in his mouth. "It has been some time."

"That it has," he said. "We were unable to contact you after the mass shadow generator was activated." He kept his voice level, but she still knew that he had tried, over and over.

"Our communications array was damaged by debris. We were limited to short range hail."

"I see. Then you may not know." He withdrew a mask from the folds of his robe and handed it to her.

"Congratulations on ending the war," she said quietly as she turned Mandalore's mask over in her hands. She gave it back to Revan—she knew without asking that the Mandalorian clans would not have a Mandalore to lead them to war again. "Were you injured?" she added in a low voice. She didn't feel anything from him, but she had been numbed.

Revan shook his head once in a sharp motion. "Come. We have much to discuss."

She led the way to the bridge, her crew saluting Revan with wide, almost disbelieving grins as she dismissed them. Out of habit, she went to her usual station overlooking the holoradar and the command consoles. He came to stand next to her, and they both watched Malachor V for a time. She did not have to wonder what the surface looked like. She had heard the roar of the earth opening up and of tectonic plates clashing together. From where they were, the wreckage of ships in orbit looked like no more than space dust.

It was he who broke the silence. "You're wounded," he said curtly. A gloved hand pressed against her side and a cracked rib knitted together in seconds instead of weeks. A deep cut on her scalp closed.He brushed at the clotted blood in her hair before his hand fell away, fingers flexing into a fist.

"It's nothing."

"How?"

"I lost consciousness briefly when the mass shadow generator was activated.Give me the numbers," she said.

"We estimate that approximately ninety-four percent of the Mandalorian fleet was destroyed by the mass shadow generator."

"And my own fleet?"

"Over four fifths."

She reached for the console before remembering the cruel mercy of outdated data and planetary scans was all that she had there. She laughed bitterly. "A victory by numbers, if just barely. What is your next move?"

"I intend to disperse the last of the Mandalorians, until there is none who can unite the remnants. Then I need to investigate Mandalore's last words."

"Which were?"

"I have said in the past that I did not believe that the Mandalorians would have attacked the Republic without external influence. He confirmed that." He was being deliberately vague. Another way that war had changed him.

"I see. Will you look into it yourself?"

"You know that I will."

"There is little that I know these days." She stared into the impassive mask. It was getting harder to remember there was a man behind the armour. It was the same thing that had happened to Mandalore. "Will you take off your mask?”

He did not move, neither to do as she asked, nor to stop her when she reached over and pulled it off. The mask clanged to the floor, and there was a long pause. She looked into a face that she had known for most of her life, all sharp angles and planes after the last few years of war rations, with something hard and cruel in the line of his mouth now. The ruins of Malachor V bathed them bothin a sickly green light that was reflected in his eyes.

"Mee." Only he could call her that, and this time there was an edge to his voice. Even without the Force bond, he knew that she was leaving. "There is much to do yet."

"It is over. The Republic does not need us anymore."

He scoffed. "The Republic is an indolent beast that could not even protect itself against a weapon like the Mandalorians."

"And?"

"The Mandalorians will not be the last to invade the Republic. Others will be waiting to strike while we are weakened. If you want to protect what is left—"

"I am leaving, Revan."

"Where will you go?" he asked mockingly. "Back to the Jedi? To let them see what they could have prevented?"

She ignored him and turned on her heel, once again not needing to think about the route back to her quarters. She could have been replaced with a droid, and few would have been the wiser. Revan followed, holding his tongue as her crew members passed, save to return their salutes with no hint of any of the heat that had been in his voice moments before. Away from curious eyes, he slammed the console to close the door to her quarters with far more force than was warranted when he saw the small, neatly packed bag on her bed.

She did not look at his face as she doffed her Republic jacket, folding it with trembling hands before she reached for the tunic that lay on her bed next to the bag, drawing it back over her plain white shirt. "We are Jedi. It is where we belong."

"You belong here, defending everything you believe in. You belong with me."

Her lip curled. "I am just one Jedi. Rather, I was. The Force bond is gone, for I am broken by war and death. You have no more use for me."

"Did you think that you were just another weapon to use against the Mandalorians?"he demanded in a low, dangerous voice. "Did you think it was just the Force that bound me to you?"He caught her hands as she knotted the ties of the tunic, lacing his fingers through hers before one hand cupped her cheek. "Mee." His voice grieved her more than he would ever know. "Once, I could feel your heartbeat with mine. Now, it is like you were never there, and all I can hear is the echo of that sound."

"It is like being adrift alone in the darkness between stars," she whispered.

He inhaled sharply, a small sound of undiluted pain. "Stay with me. You will not be alone. You will never be alone." He lifted her face gently, bending to press his mouth to hers. She ran her hands over his stubbled cheeks and he kissed her harder, with a hunger sharpened by absence, mouth roving down her neck. She reached for his breastplate, seeking the catches with clumsy fingers, blindly wanting nothing more but to be close to him, drawn like a moth to a flame, a lost ship following the glimmer of light in the distance. He let her go only to remove his armour, down to his undershirt as she had been, and then that too, then hers, until there was nothing between them. Even without the bond, their hearts still beat in sync, racing under each other’s fingers. He breathed her name in her ear as they moved together, both seeking and finding each other in a cold, indifferent universe.

Afterwards as she dressed, he asked her one final time, without any real hope. “Stay with me.”

"No. Do not make me say it again."

He studied her face for a long time, stroking her lips and hair. "So be it. I cannot turn away from my path."

"I know." She pressed her lips to a hollow cheek. He turned his mouth to her, anguish in his eyes.

"You always understood me,"he whispered. "Perhaps one day you will forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive. Going to war was my choice. But I have to leave."

"Then remember this. I love you, Meetra. I always have, and I always will. Remember me, as I was and as I am." He kissed her for one last time under the stars.

"You speak as if we will never meet again." The thought caught in her throat.

He said gently, "Perhaps one day, we will meet again at the end of all things."

Her arms tightened around him before she broke free of his grasp. She walked towards the door, his eyes boring into her. It would be easier if she didn't look back, she told herself. But she did.

"Go then." His face was hard again. "Show the council what their inaction has wrought."

"May the Force be with you, Revan."

His face twisted. "And with you. Go."

Chapter 9: The Favourite

Chapter Text

“You always loved this place.”

“Hello, Kavar.” Meetra had not heard his approach, but then again, she was blinded and deafened. She patted the empty bench beside her and he sat down, back ramrod straight and hands resting on his knees. The waters in the Room of a Thousand Fountains were almost loud enough to drown out the past, even if just for a moment.

“I must admit that I’m not here solely on my own accord, although I did wish to see you.”

“The council sent you?”

“The short answer is yes. They wish to ask if you know where Revan went.”

She traced a finger over the hilt of her lightsaber, the one with the violet blade, which had drawn the usual foolish comments about how much red she had mixed in with Jedi blue. Her offhand hilt had matched Revan’s, its blade as silver as the streams and falls in this place. Their crystals were twinned, each taking the other’s colour when they started dual wielding. Did he still wield those blades? Revan had vanished with the fleet, and there were rumours that some of his flotillas had attacked distant Republic outposts. The war should have been over. But now, she wondered what he would do with a Republic that was too weak to protect itself. Everything had changed. The only familiar thing left was the weapon in her hand, its ridges and grooves mapped to her callouses.

“I don’t know. I left the fleet at Malachor V. He did not say where he was going, nor did I ask.”

Kavar’s gaze followed the small movements of her fingers. “You know why we had to ask this of you.”

“I do.” Of course she was going to be interrogated, although Kavar’s version of it was gentle to a fault. He never pushed her further than she could go, and right now she felt like one of the cracked glass corpses on Serocco, one touch away from shattering. Turn the tables and she’d ask these questions too. But she had no answers. How could they understand it? What did she know that they did not? She wondered if any of the council remembered that she and Revan had been bonded. Even if they did not, all knew that she had been with him since they had chosen war. Until now.

Kavar nodded at the lightsaber. “What happened to your offhand hilt?”

He had been the one to construct it with her. “Lost it on Dxun. Sorry.” Just one more piece of her consumed by the war. To an outsider, they might have been meditating together, as they had so many times in the past. But she had lost the Force. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could hear was the echo of screams.

“You don’t have to apologise to me for that.” Kavar spoke to her as if she was a scared child again, Dantooine’s newest kid in the Enclave, secretly lost without Revan’s presence. History was repeating itself the way Master Vrook usually did. Kavar had taken pity on her back then too. She wondered what else would loop back around.

“For something else then?” Like going to war. Like leaving him, and Atris, and her vows.

“No.” Kavar was a terrible liar. She had always managed to pry small secrets from him, like what he really thought of council meetings (boring, but necessary) and the exact details of his training schedule (Revan had been impressed, Alek lasted for just a week when he tried it). But this one word had only truth in it.

“Will you join the council later?”

“Yes.” She felt Kavar’s gaze shift to her. “Not as an old friend, but as a master.”

“I see. And what about now?”

“For now—I am sitting with a favourite student.”

“Jedi aren’t supposed to play favourites.”

His mouth quirked, but the look in his eyes was that of farewell. She didn’t need the Force to know that. “No, I suppose not.” He laid one broad, warm hand on her shoulder. “Nonetheless, it is true. I am glad that you did not die in the war.”

If only she could agree. She looked down at her hands—seemingly bloodless, because most of those that she killed had been from a distance with a few curt words, with so much more efficiency than cutting down one person at a time. Kavar squeezed her shoulder before he dropped his hand. “One day, you will find your peace again. I believe this, even if you do not. I must join the others. Come to the council chambers when you are ready.”

She had returned to the Jedi of her own accord. Yet Revan had still turned her into a thrown blade, aimed at the heart of the Jedi Council. In Kavar’s case, the wound was an old one, easy to open and bleed as history wheeled on them all over again.

Chapter 10: The Reason

Chapter Text

The smell of blood and burnt flesh hung in the air. Malak moaned, a horrible, gurgling sound through the wreckage of his face.

Soft, Malak had said—an intentional provocation, a shot aimed at Revan’s one weakness. Soft for a pretty face. Soft for one weak Jedi who refused to follow you. Clinging to a memory of the one who slipped from your grasp. Otherwise, Dantooine should be rubble by now. I think I’ll send the assassins to find her and bring her in. I will enjoy making her scream.

Alek had once been nearly his equal in lightsaber duelling. Impulsive, but strong, fast. One would have thought that slaying innumerable Jedi would have served to enhance his skill, but it seemed that it was not the case. Revan gave his apprentice a firsthand lesson in exactly how far he would go to protect Meetra. This was just one more man, amongst the millions that he had killed. One more death. But this had once been Alek, who used to top up Meetra’s plate from his own, because she was still a ‘growing child’, and because everyone—particularly the kitchen staff—underestimated how much she could eat. Alek who had pretended to bang his head on doorframes to make Meetra laugh. Revan could have killed one more time to protect her. But she would not have wanted this death, even if Alek was long gone and only Darth Malak remained. She would not have wanted any of this.

“Excited inquiry: may this unit have the enjoyment of terminating the tall meatbag?” HK-47 levelled his blaster rifle.

Revan shook his head. “No. Malak still has his uses. Remove him from my sight.”

“Reluctant agreement: as you wish, master.” The droid extended one mechanical hand, then locked it around Malak’s ankle and began dragging him out. Malak was barely conscious from a combination of pain and blood loss, but his survival was in his own hands now. Weakness meant death.

Alone on the bridge, Revan removed his mask, looking out at the stars that dusted the sky, thinking of one particular night, just after her trials and before she was formally knighted. She had let her hair out of its braid one last time, and spread it out behind her as she lay down in the crisp spring grass, laughing as he flopped down beside her. On their backs, they looked up at a night sky brilliant with stars, hiding a distant war that was still invisible and impalpable to two young Jedi, framing the sky with their fingers, making up constellations and stories as they bumped elbows.

There was a thousand ways that things might have been different. He still walked the familiar circuits of such thoughts in the quiet moments when the ache of her absence gnawed at him. But such speculation was pointless. He had failed to keep her by his side where he could protect her himself, but maybe this was another way that he would never have to watch her die in his arms. The Sith waited in the worlds beyond the abandoned monuments of Korriban and Malachor V. He could still avert the future that he had seen, one that haunted his nightmares, even if it meant destroying the warped bureaucratic machinery of the Republic to forge a machine of war from the remains. He would do it, no matter the cost.

He had thought that the lesson of Malachor V for her would be the truth that he had already found—that she had the strength to achieve victory no matter the cost, and together, they would have been unstoppable. He wished that she had realised that she was worth more than any nebulous concept of government or justice. Instead, she turned her back on war, on the Force, on him. But if she could leave war behind, and live a life free from him, free from the Jedi, then he could see this through to the bitter end.

There had been and still was a reason behind his every action.

The reason was her.

Revan settled the mask back on his face, and hid his reason from the galaxy.

Chapter 11: Pax

Chapter Text

She existed.

She ate for nourishment, three portions of chewy slop daily from the food synthesiser. It claimed to contain every nutrient necessary for a healthy active body, but most clothes hung loose on her frame.

She worked, eyes glazed as she tended to machines. This month, it was in a factory that produced a small plasteel ring used in plumbing. Her world shrank to the metallic sounds of the machinery, the smell of grease on her skin, and the beep of droids. On the rare occasions that she spoke, her voice was a monotone, alien to her own ears.

Beyond the Outer Rim, news of the Republic was scarce. Still, she eventually heard about the Jedi going to war with the Republic, by which she surmised they meant the Sith—it was one and the same all the way out here.

The mention of his name was more proof that she failed to numb herself. She had flattered herself, thinking that perhaps she should return, perhaps she could turn him away from war. But even as they had held each other, he had been implacable. It was his way.

She had thought herself inured to death, until a loose-lipped drunk staggered past crowing of how the Jedi had killed the mighty Revan, almost a year after the war began.

She had been wrong about so many things. This was just one more.

*

"There is still light in him, and maybe it is the will of the Force that this has happened. This is his chance to atone for his crimes." Bastila repeated as the Masters argued. "I saw through the bond, that he wanted to protect something, at any cost…"

"So he waged war on the Jedi to protect something?" Master Vrook sounded disgusted and Bastila hung her head. "That boy was always too proud, and more than likely he is just protecting his own power."

"There was one that he cared for," Kavar said slowly, his face almost unfamiliar without his usual quick smile. "My student, the one that I would have taken as a Padawan if not for the circ*mstances."

"I recall that one, of course.” Vrook's frown deepened. "But after the war—"

"The feelings ran deep indeed," Atris sniffed. "No doubt it corrupted them both."

"You know as well as I that it was not the dark side that had touched that one." Kavar's eyes narrowed. "In any case, it matters little. I believe Bastila—in his dying moments, I do not think that Revan could have manipulated what she saw."

Master Vandar stood up on his seat, which meant that he was now just visible over the edge of the table. "I think that we have no choice. We need Revan's knowledge and strength. And I do not believe that he is beyond redemption."

"You did not know either of them!" Atris' voice was almost a shout.

"Calm yourself," Master Zhar said. He exchanged glances with Master Vandar. "Perhaps it is best if the ones who were close to the exile are not involved. The plan has some merit. And it may be our only chance to turn the tides of war."

*

Pax threw the apple, and at the apex of its flight, it eclipsed Dantooine's moons. He caught it easily from where he was slouched in his chair with his feet propped on the table. He knew without looking that Bastila was clenching her jaw, and was two, perhaps three throws away from grinding her teeth.

"Don't you have better things to be doing?" she finally grated, five throws later.

"I'm practicing," he said insouciantly. The next time the apple went up, it stayed there.

"I fail to see how this is making you any better at deflecting blasters!"

"Precision and patience will win you battles," he said in a calm voice, something that he noticed Bastila and the majority of the Jedi struggled to achieve despite endless droning about peace. "I'm practicing both."

Catch. Throw. Catch. Throw. Catch.

"Why are you so waspish? It's a beautiful moonlit night, and we're alone—"

"Pax!" The stiff rebuke was accompanied by a blush that crept from neck to hairline. "I don't even know what the lack of cloud cover has anything to do with, um, anything."

"Nothing at all, beyond affecting the ambient temperature and chances of precipitation." He clicked his tongue and continued staring out over the grassy plains, a dim rippling silver in the moonlight. No wonder the Jedi had an enclave out here—it really was peaceful. He couldn't recall if he had ever been here before, but it seemed familiar. Perhaps he'd been in orbit, or passed through the spaceport. "This is a good place. It feels like home."

Bastila went from red to white in seconds. "Have you...been here before?"

He shrugged carelessly. "I don't think so. Not enough life nor people to swindle. But I think I'll retire here when I'm too old and too slow for a quick draw.”

"It's not that boring here," she said with a rush of relief. He noted that as strange and filed it under the mystery of Bastila, to muse over during the next meditation lesson. He threw and caught the apple one final time, taking a big bite of the fruit. That too, was familiar, and very delicious.

Chapter 12: The Prodigal

Chapter Text

Jolee was waiting for him at the landing pad, and greeted him with a slap on the back. “Good to see you, boy. Skipped out on the celebrations? Can’t say I blame you.” The streets of Coruscant had been packed with people commemorating the end of the war with juma and fireworks. It had ended with a fizzle rather than a bang for him; the tedious work of scattering Sith forces was a job that Revan had chosen to undertake with only the droids as company.

Revan gave Jolee a thin smile. “I’m not quite thick-skinned enough to expect a hero’s welcome.” The halls of the Jedi Temple seemed to close in around him with the weight of memory as he followed Jolee.

The old man glanced at him and slowed his pace. “We’ve got time, if you want to have a look around. You haven’t been back here for a while, have you?”

Revan shrugged. “So it seems.” They passed a small side corridor, and Revan decided to follow it on a whim. The corridor was bare permacrete after it bent away from the main hallway, and was empty apart from a couple of whirring maintenance droids. It turned out that this was because it led to the droid workshop. Revan entered, feeling disorientated. The work tables had been moved around, and every surface was a mess of bundles of wires, discarded bolts, tools. He opened one of the cupboards, a large one at ground level, expecting…something, apart from jumbled solder lasers. His mind clawed at the blocks placed by the Council, sending pain lancing through his temples. There was still something important that he had forgotten. An absence, the echo of a sound that was something between a heartbeat and a scream. His ravaged mind managed to supply him with the half-formed memory of a laughing voice calling his name. Reh-reh. Vaaaan. Revan.

“Are you all right, boy?”

Revan inhaled a slow breath, shadows dancing on the insides of his eyelids, taunting him with their insubstantiality. “I’m fine,” was the terse answer. They spoke of centering one's self, and no wonder he had felt off kilter during his second apprenticeship in Dantooine. He had not been there for long, but it was a necessary risk; it was the one surviving Jedi enclave where he could be rehabilitated, if one could call it that. His fingers had gripped a lightsaber hilt far more comfortably than a blaster rifle. Unsurprisingly, he had been a natural at being a Jedi, save the part where he tried to find balance on a lie.

Jolee grunted in a tone that suggested Revan was about as believable as the average used swoop racer salesman. “Come on then. Bastila wanted to see you before you meet the council.”

Revan shut the cupboard, grasping for a different name on the tip of his tongue. “Bastila…is she well?”

Jolee cast a sideways look at him, understanding more than he let on. “Ask her yourself. I’m too old and tired to be a messenger.”

Revan chuckled. “Using your age to get out of something that you don’t feel like doing—I shouldn’t be surprised.”

The door slid open, and Bastila burst through. “Pax! They said that you were back!” Her face was radiant with an awful hope.

Jolee gave Revan an opaque look, one that proved the old man was a Jedi Master in all but name. “Here comes the welcome party. I’ll leave you two young’uns to it.”

The moment that they were alone, Bastila threw her arms around his neck. “I missed you.”

It took him a second to settle a pleasant smile on his face, even as he removed her hands from him. “Please, call me Revan.”

Joy was replaced by confusion, then pain. A predictable sequence of emotions. “I don’t understand,” she said in a whisper. “Is it because the bond is…is gone? I don’t even know how or why it changed.”

She was a child. He had been a knight before she was even an apprentice, and he had gone to war before she became a Padawan. “No. I am sorry. It is because my memories are returning.” He said it as it was, a simple matter of fact. Bastila’s presence no longer hovered at the edge of his consciousness, but it merely felt like an uninvited guest had finally taken her leave. Old memories were slowly expanding into the space. A silhouette in a doorway, turning to look back at him. Dantooine’s moons waxing. The scent of the earth and grass before rain. The Room of a Thousand Fountains, silver waters singing with the sound of muffled laughter. A lightsaber’s violet crystal in a small slender hand.

“But…I love you,” she said, tears welling in eyes the colour of thunderheads.

“You loved a shadow,” he said, not unkindly. Bastila was in love with the personality that the Jedi had imprinted on him; an odd pastiche of straight-laced Jedi master and witty scoundrel, her perfect man. He had kissed her once because she was pretty and obnoxious, which had seemed like a good idea to an addled, partially wiped mind who had a past that was no more than an impression of colour, a smudged silk print of a false life. She had been real, in a certain sense of the word. Tangible in a way that none of his false memories were.

“You saved me from the dark side. Your love saved me.”

“You saved yourself.” It was not a lie. The choice had been hers, and there was still some part of Bastila that believed in the Jedi in a way that Revan did not, even without the cynical voice of a smuggler overlying his own. He had no desire to cause her any more pain. It was done. His path now was to seek his own truth. “Goodbye, Bastila.”

“I’ll wait! I’m going to wait until—“ The closing door severed the flow of her words, the promise of some condition that one or both of them would fulfil, a prophecy meant for someone else.

Revan headed for the council chambers, darkly amused by how he had not needed to ask for directions. They were waiting for the return of the prodigal knight, an array of anxious faces of various colours and heights. Dorak, Vandar and Zhar had been joined by some humans that he did not recognise, although meeting the blue-eyed gazes of the prissy woman in white and the blonde man gave his headache new talons.

“Revan. You are to be congratulated for your efforts in ending the war and eliminating the last of the Sith.”

“I always finish what I start,” he said in the blandest of voices, as if he was commenting on the best shade of beige paint for the Jedi temple. The woman in white made a strangled sound, but Revan didn’t need a mask to hide his amusem*nt. Jedi really were very easy to wind up, like the simplest mechanical toys. “Admiral Onasi tells me that he forwarded my request to the council for this meeting.”

Master Vandar was the one who spoke again. “He did. The council wishes to know why you want to access your old records.”

Revan gave them a close-lipped smile. “I would have thought that the reason would be self-evident. Who in my position would not wish the same?”

“And our concern is that this will lead you back down your old path.” Vrook’s stare was stern.

“There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.” Revan could play their games. “It is not power nor the dark side that I am seeking. I know that you can see that much. All that I want is the truth.”

A woman with grey hair said in a youthful voice that didn’t match her face, “We can give him the truth at least, even if we could not give it to the—”

“Enough, Lonna. This has nothing to do with the exile.” Vrook glowered at the other master.

Revan’s eyes narrowed. “The exile?”

“None of your concern. We are discussing you.” The woman in white had a sneer which suggested that inner peace was not her forte.

Vandar made a small gesture in a request for calm. “I can understand why Revan has made this request. His path has ultimately led him back to us. We trusted him to end the Sith threat, and he has done so. I move to support him accessing his record.”

Zhar, Dorak, Lonna and the blonde man voted in support. Vrook, the woman in white, and another master with handlebar moustache voted against. A victory by a narrow margin, and one that surprised Revan. He left for the archives directly before the council had the chance to change their minds, radioing T3 to meet him there.

“Revan.” The blonde man entered as T3 interfaced with the console, starting the data transfer. He was young for a master, about a handful of years older than Revan himself. Despite having a jaw that could have been used as a brick, Revan suspected that the master would have been popular with the female apprentices and Padawans, and a few of the male ones too. “Do you remember me?”

Revan’s stomach rolled as red hot pain arced between his left eye and the back of his head like a blaster bolt to the brain. “I know that I should.”

“I see.” A muscle worked in that square jaw. “I believe that it will come back to you—for I’d be surprised if the memory of our mutual friend will be any less to you than those of the Star Forge maps. Although that which is most important is sometimes the hardest to confront.”

Revan stared at the master. “Mutual friend?”

The other man’s smile was sad. “Yes. A part of your truth lies with her, I think. I cannot tell you more than that.”

“They said something about an exile in the meeting. Is that her?”

“The journey to the truth is yours.”

Once Jedi Masters descended to cryptic babble and nonsensical koans, it was time to end the conversation. “Thank you.” For not much at all.

The master paused at the door. “You must understand why many of the council still have reservations. Whatever your reasons were for going to war, many were wounded as a result. And those wounds still echo across the galaxy. In places. In people. Many paid such a price for your war, but I suspect that you were not spared either.” There was a flicker of emotion in his eyes that made Revan think that this master had been wounded by the war too, even if he had watched from the sidelines. “Remember the cost when you look to the future, shifting and uncertain as it is.” With that, he was gone.

Chapter 13: Remember

Chapter Text

T3 downloaded more than the council had intended, because Revan had lost the habit of taking things at face value long before his mind had been shattered and remade.

He was nothing if not methodical. He started by poring over his file. There was no mention in the summary page that he had gone on to wage war on the Jedi, which in his opinion, seemed somewhat relevant, and possibly even warranted big red letters or a stamp that said ‘Went Sith’. With that glaring omission noted, he started at the beginning.

Human child, stowaway on a freighter in the Outer Rim, aged five or six. Promising youngling. Assigned to train on Coruscant. Basic meditation training completed. Basic lightsaber training completed. Basic Force techniques completed. He read the lists of fellow pupils in each class until his vision blurred. Assigned to Master Arren Kae. Around age twelve he found it. He started Padawan training, and a short note underneath: ‘Formed Force bond with an apprentice (Meetra Surik). Separated.’

Mimi. Meemee. Ra-ra. Meetra. Mee. No one else was allowed to call her that.

It is on such things that the galaxy spins.

*

Her file was just as heavily encrypted and sparse as his had been. He stared at the summary page for a long time. There was a holo image of her, from before the Mandalorian Wars, already shorn of a Padawan braid, Jedi robes bunched around her shoulders. She was looking at someone standing off to the side with a lopsided half smile, as if she had just heard a joke so bad that it was almost funny.

He remembered the way her eyes crinkled into a smile, and the line of her mouth when she was trying to clamp down on laughter. A running wry commentary on the absurdities of the universe, the Jedi, the Force, of people and life itself. A mediocre Jedi, full of emotion. She had never learned to lie as he did, but in the core of his buried emotions, with her as his centre, the star around which he circled in orbit, he had also found peace.

He finally dragged his eyes away to see her status: ‘Exiled. Location unknown.’

*

Sometimes he remembered Alek before he was Malak, a friend in the years that he spent away from Meetra, and then when they were all friends. Then he remembered the changes that war wrought in Alek, a competitive edge to notching kills, and the rift that drove between Meetra and Alek. He remembered that he did nothing to stop what was happening to Alek. After a certain point, he encouraged him, made it so that it was not so much a fall as a jump.

*

He remembered the taste of her mouth, the scent of her hair and skin. He remembered running his thumbs over her hipbones, sharp from too little rations and too much suffering, before he drew her close. He remembered her standing in the door, outlined in the harsh light, before she walked away one last time.

*

He started to remember what waited in the darkness beyond the Outer Rim, and why he had tried to bend her to his will.

*

He didn’t need to say farewell to anyone, not even the former crew. He retraced his route from before, this time without an army at his beck and call. This time without knowing if he still had a reason to fight. But a galaxy that might still contain her and her life and her love was reason enough. He remembered now. And that was all he needed.

Chapter 14: The Worst Jedi

Chapter Text

At some stage, she recalled being told that Revan was not only alive, but had saved the Republic again, while she was elbow deep in a maintenance droid. Rumour and truth sounded much the same after travelling the span of the galaxy, moulded by the minds and mouths of sentients.

The rest was a blur. The endless grey of permacrete and plasteel. Grim faces of fellow drifters, too many missing limbs and eyes, others with wounds like hers, hidden behind blank stares. Grease. The roar of ship engines.

She worked on droids more than anything else, wiping their memory cores, mending hurts that made sense. Damage that could be repaired with some spare parts and a steady hand with a hydrospanner, sometimes with some careful programming. If only she was a droid. If only she didn’t have to remember what it felt like to hear the Force, or to leave the one that she loved.

Five years or so after the last news of Revan, the Republic caught up to her. A pair of very polite soldiers, rifles held at ease, asked for her by a name that she had not used for a decade. How no longer mattered, although her guess would be that facial recognition software had found a match on her sliced ID. She briefly considered fleeing—as she had been for a decade—but given that they had already found her and sent a cruiser to escort one former Jedi, then they were not going to take no for an answer.

Instead, she boarded the ship, greeted by the commander, a starched man who greeted her in a brittle voice. “Meetra Surik? Welcome to the Harbinger.”

*

She woke with a start when someone touched her shoulder, already reaching for the vibroblade with one hand, the other gripping Atton’s wrist hard enough to leave bruises, although her muscles trembled with fatigue

“Whoa there.” He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. She released him and lowered the blade with a sigh. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Then again, you have quite the bounty on your head, so I can’t complain about being greeted that way.”

“Sorry,” she muttered, slumping back into the copilot’s seat. She hadn’t let her guard down like that in years—falling asleep around strangers would have been a sure fire way to end up robbed, dead or worse—but then she hadn’t had fought that hard or that long since she had left Revan and the fleet. In the cold of hyperspace and without the jet fuel of adrenaline, her muscles ached like she was an apprentice all over again.

He sat back down and turned back to the console, pretending to check on the autopilot. “We’ve a while yet before we hit Telos. If I were you, I’d check if there’s water in the shower, and then catch some sleep. The old witch is haunting the port dorm, but there’s beds on the starboard side as well. May not have been cleaned since the Mandalorian Wars, but still better than a kolto tank or a prison cell.”

“Well, you’ve suddenly acquired a sunny disposition,” she said with a tired laugh. “What happened to ‘worst Jedi that I’ve ever met’, and ‘I was better off in my cell’?”

He gave her a sideways look. “Yeah, well, enjoy while it lasts. Plus, if you’re not half dead with exhaustion, you might even somehow explain why we just killed a planet if some lawman stiff at Telos decides to ask.”

She yawned so widely that her jaw popped. “Are you sure that you don’t need to get some sleep too?”

He arched an eyebrow. “I mean, if you’re inviting—“

“You can stop right there, before both of us regret what I do next.” She tipped her chin down and attempted to glare at him from under her brows, but ruined it with another yawn.

He just chuckled, a low and warm sound. “I napped a lot in that cell. Not much else to do in there, although that was pretty much the case for the whole station. Go on. I’ll stay here in case the hyperdrive plays up. Can’t promise that I can do anything about it if it does, but...”

“If we crash out of hyperspace, it was nice knowing you,” She stood and stretched, feeling Atton’s gaze trace the lines of her body. He’d obviously been in a cell for far too long but she was too tired to be annoyed, especially given that he was trying to be kind. “Eyes up here, Rand.”

His eyes snapped up, face painted in strokes of blue by the light of the hyperspace warp. He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Yeah, uh…sweet dreams.”

She decided that she would really rather not know how much underwear clad Jedi featured in his dreams, even if that underwear was a sensible crop top and shorts. Instead, she took his advice, then fell into a dreamless sleep for the first time in a decade.

Chapter 15: Dance Dance

Chapter Text

“Atton, I need some advice.”

The pilot spun his seat around, one eyebrow raised. “Now that’s one that I don’t hear much. What’s happened? Please tell me that you haven’t lost all our credits on a pazaak game.”

Meetra gave him a look that had once made admirals quail in their shiny boots, but Atton’s grin merely stretched a little wider. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

“Just an honest assessment of your pazaak abilities.”

“Look, apart from that Twi’lek who wanted to hook up a power coupling with you—Mira’s phrase, not mine—I beat all the rest by myself. That includes the previous champion. Just little old me, with my honest Jedi face.”

“You learned from the best, after all. So, if it’s not pazaak, what is it? How to shoot from the hip? How to pick the best juma in the seediest dive?”

Meetra crooked a finger at him. “Come on. We’re going to need a bit more space for this.”

This time, she managed to make both his eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. “Well, you have my attention. Lead on.”

She led him to the cargo hold, closed the door and locked it, but lifted a finger when Atton opened his mouth. “Before you make any clever comments, you’ve watched plenty of dancers right? Spent time in cantinas and have just seen lots of women who dance well?”

He closed his mouth, then opened it again, hazel eyes guarded. “Uh. I wouldn’t say many. I mean, yeah, sure, pazaak dens are usually in cantinas, and there usually are dancers…”

“Right. So you can give me some tips about how to dance for a Hutt.”

Atton clearly did not expect the conversation to take that particular direction. The muscles in his neck jumped as he swallowed before he finally spoke. “I can do that. Yeah.”

Meetra shrugged off her jacket, throwing it over the workbench. She stood facing Atton, who was alternately studying a stain on his left boot and the tip of her right shoulder. “Atton, I don’t have the faintest idea how to dance.” She flicked both her wrists to her right, then to her left. “I guess that I could keep doing this?”

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” There was that raw look in his eyes again, the same when the assassin had come for her in Telos, and when he had asked her to train him so that he could protect her.

“Unfortunately for me, I believe in the old adage of don’t ask of others what you wouldn’t do yourself. That being said, I’d volunteer you, but they were very specific about a female dancer.”

That drew a chuckle out of him. “Yeah. Plus I don’t think I’d fit into the outfit. That’s probably fine for the hands—slow it down, imagine you’re drawing circles or curves with the tips of your fingers.”

“Like this?”

“That’ll do. And you, uh, have to move your hips.” He stepped closer, hovered his hands over her waist. “May I?” His voice was very quiet.

“Sure.” Meetra felt an odd frisson of tension from Atton. “I’m sorry to have to ask this of you—awkward, I know.”

The look he gave her suggested that he had been tasked with handling something fragile and precious, and that he was convinced that he was going to break it irreparably. “You move like a warrior. Muscles always coiled and ready to spring.” He placed his hands on either side of her waist, his face set with apparent concentration. “But that’s no good for dancing. Here, just try moving your hips this way.” His left hand pressed into her right hip gently. “That’s good. Now back the other way. You should move your feet too—cross one in front of the other, and that will help the hip movement.”

“Okay.” This looked somewhat closer to the few dancers that she had seen. “Think that’ll get me in the door?”

Atton’s voice was hoarse. “Yeah. That’ll work.”

“Hey, are you all right? Do you need to get some water?”

There was a brief burst of mental pazaak that may have violated some basic laws of arithmetic. “Just don’t like the idea of you walking into the Hutt’s den alone.”

“Want to tag along?” She tried to keep her tone light. “You’ve already seen me in my underwear anyway. Plus, I need you to get some kath hounds drunk. Maybe slice the way into a Hutt’s vault”

His lips twitched into his familiar smirk. “Consider me convinced. Use your Jedi hand wave to get me in, and let’s have some fun.”

*

Meetra held up the lightsaber focusing crystal in triumph, then handed it to Atton for safekeeping. The ridiculous outfit had no pockets, although she had ended up needing some creative padding solutions to get the top to fit—something less precious could possibly be stuffed there, although retrieval could prove inconvenient.

“So, on a scale of panicked gizka to irritated bantha, how would you rate that dance?” She shivered as the door opened and the Nar Shaddaa wind hit her, always sharp on a building three miles tall, and redolent with the stench of ship engine fumes and organic waste. She was trying to rub some heat into her hands when a warm weight settled over her shoulders. Atton draped his jacket around her, then doffed his fingerless gloves and handed them to her too. She resisted the urge to bury her face in the the warmth of his jacket.

“Hmm, tough one. I’d say a hungry baby rancor.” He took one lapel in hand and turned it slightly to show her the vibrodagger hidden in an inner pocket—just in case she needed it—then jerked his head in the direction of the docks.

“Baby rancor? Watch it, Rand.”

“Oh, I did. Believe me, I sure did. Uh, watched your back. Which is what you brought me along for, right?” He was doing a poor job of hiding a grin.

“Atton, my Padawan, you younglings these days drive me to despair.”

“Yeah, yeah, master, come along before you fall asleep, we’re out well past your bedtime.” He scowled at a drunk man who wolf whistled at her, only relaxing again when they were well past him. “I think we’ve seen the highlights of Nar Shaddaa by now, so where to next?”

“Dantooine. All that fresh air will do you good. Maybe you’ll even be able to meditate without your mind dwelling on the latest Twi-Lek beauty to cross your path.” She grinned at him. “It’s just grass and nature in all its glory, which is to say, kath hounds and kinrath. And if we’re lucky enough to find Vrook, you’ll realise what a delight I am by comparison.

“I’ll take you any day over the last guy too. That moustache looked like he killed a womp rat and stuck its mane to his face.”

“Here’s another Jedi lesson for you, don’t say those things, just think them.”

She felt the attack coming—what Atton called ‘a bad feeling’—and was already pulling Atton into cover behind a wall when his instincts kicked in too. The rifle bolt melted the ferrocrete nearby on impact as Atton shoved her against the wall none too gently, keeping himself between her and the rest of the world, blaster in hand and scanning the alley for a way out and any other attackers. “Got another one for you. Stop saying words like ‘Jedi’ or ‘Padawan’, just think them. And build that lightsaber soon, for space’s sake.” He handed her his second blaster.

“I thought the bounty on Jedi was off.” Meetra drew his vibrodagger with her left hand, and nodded at the far end of the alley.

“Stay close to the wall. You can take it up with that glorified grav-ball later. Should have known better than to trust the Exchange. Come on.” He spun on his heel and shot a man behind him, the stealth generator failing in a buzz of static. “Oh hey, it’s the Sith, can’t blame the Exchange after all.”

In the back of her head, Meetra could feel the others sense the danger, and she let them in for a moment, hoping that they would figure out where to find them before she concentrated on this little pickle. She sent a shockwave blasting forward knocking over two others. “Less talking, more fighting!”

Atton didn’t reply. He didn’t have even his jacket for armour, but he was used to ugly fights, striking with the brutal pragmatism of someone who survived at any cost. No, that wasn’t right. He threw himself in front of any blow aimed at her, no conscious thoughts running through his mind, no pazaak or lust or hyperspace routes, just a crystalline desire to protect her. He moved to intercept a blow needlessly when she had already dodged far out of reach, using the Force to pull herself to safety. Jedi were famed for their speed with good reason, but she was not fast enough to stop Atton from reeling from a kick to the solar plexus meant for her, as she stunned a second assassin. It was just long enough for a third assassin’s blade to strike true.

“ Atton! ” Meetra felt no pain, not like when Kreia had lost her hand. Not that sort of pain anyway. Her first Padawan, a man who had tortured and killed so many, who cracked open his heart for her without daring to hope for forgiveness, who wanted to atone but didn’t know how. And he was right, going for a whiny little Padawan really was a great way to mess up a Jedi. But in the centre of her emotion that contained no hatred, what she found was a curious peace. An acceptance of intent to protect and a strength that turned the Force around her into a whirlwind, knocking everyone away from them both. She had not managed that since Malachor V, and she needed every shred of her returning strength to get them both out of this mess.

She went to his side, cold settling in her bones when she saw the blood spatter the back of his hand when he coughed, the litany of wounds that she had seen in the wars not entirely unforgotten. He blinked at her and asked in a slur, “You okay?”

“Better than you.” She slid her hand under his shirt, slick with blood, and pulled the wound on his chest together in a clumsy knitted tangle of the Force, distracted by the fact that some of the assassins were dragging themselves upright and she could hear some of the Hutt’s Gamorrean enforcers charging in their direction like a bantha stampede. She wiped her hands quickly on his shirt before taking hold of her borrowed double vibroblade again. The assassin who had been wielding it was in no state to ask for it back.

A Jedi—even alone, without a lightsaber, even if her arms and legs were bare to the Nar Shaddaa wind—was difficult to kill. She could operate on necessity, as she had through the war. She could kill this entire platoon of assassins, because it was difficult for twenty people to attack all at once in a narrow alley. The Gamorrreans had obviously noticed their theft, because they were ignoring the assassins and swinging at her too, which was a spacing bother.

The Gamorrean behind her dropped to a blaster bolt before she could angle her blade backwards for a parry, and she saw Atton, using the wall as a crutch, blaster in a white knuckled grip. His face was as grey as the ferrocrete, but he raised his blaster and shot at another assailant behind her.

“Get down!” The order was given in a voice that would have forced compliance, but another Sith helpfully drove his blade towards Atton again, catching him with a glancing blow before Meetra crushed the Sith’s consciousness into oblivion. Atton fell to his knees, a new red blotch blooming in the fabric of his shirt. Meetra launched herself off the wall, her blades cutting an arc through the air before she landed next to him. At the end of the alley, she saw the rifleman lining up another shot, the melee finally thinned out sufficiently for that. She kept moving, hoping she would be fast enough. Wheezing with exertion, Atton dragged himself half upright and took a shot. She felt him call on the Force without knowing it, and it was just enough for the shooter to have to take cover. Then blaster fire lit up the other end of the alley and she recognised familiar voices. It was over. No one else was still upright around them.

Atton looked up at her as his legs gave out and he slumped to the ground, hand pressed to that first deep wound. “You okay?” He asked again, voice thick with blood. “You safe?”

Tears blurred her vision as she pulled at his shirt, spreading her hands over his chest as she called on the Force. “I’m fine. I’m safe. Stay with me, Atton.” He was right. The Jedi and Sith argued while the galaxy burned around them.

He smiled faintly. “Good. Good. How it should be. Have to save you.”

Her other friends were talking to her, a buzz of words and rustle of medpacs being torn. Meetra closed her eyes and felt the thrum of life on this planet, the sum total of hope nourished and violence excised. In a distant corner of her mind, Kreia was commenting on a fool’s impending death. She was just one person, one note in the cacophony of people on this planet, so many carrying the echo of war. And among all that, she found one fading heartbeat, the echo of Atton’s thoughts without walls around them, trailing off into the darkness, and she called to him until he stayed.

Author’s note: In my headcanon, this story takes place between this chapter and the next.

Chapter 16: Korriban

Chapter Text

She, of all people, was well aware that the spectres of the past had power over a person.

This was a lucid dream, the dark side in Korriban trying to make her rationalise all that she did, to dismiss the consequences of her actions. She killed the visions of Cariaga, Xaset, Talvon and Nisotsa, just as she had killed them in truth, only this time she used her lightsabers to slay her ghosts, while they had been crushed to death on Malachor V.

This time she could walk the paths of Dxun and disarm the mines instead, but she had learned it too late, the efforts of an exile who sometimes moonlighted as a minefield sweeper. In truth her soldiers’ blood had still fertilised the lush jungle of Dxun and she still sometimes retched remembering the smell of charred flesh.

She saw Kreia for what she was, or what she might yet become, and refused to pick a side until the choice was forced upon her, which was the worst choice of all. The price of her apathy was their deaths, and there was a searing truth in there, that it would be just the same as killing them with her own hands, tears streaking down her face as her friends looked at her with betrayal in their eyes before their phantoms dissipated. The awful knowledge that she possessed the power to wholly realise this nightmare was enough to crush her.

And at the last, she saw Revan, his face masked, in full armour as he had been on that last night. But this time, her mirror stood by his side, wearing hatred and anger as a shield. This was what might have been, if she had not turned her back on him. He ignited his lightsabers, violet and red. A chill crept down her spine—he had kept the crystal twinned to her own first lightsaber. Somehow, she knew this part of the vision to be true.

They fought her the way that they had always fought: in perfect harmony, back to back, blows raining on her, almost faster than she could parry. The heat and sparks of the lightsabers clashing was more real than any of the other visions had been, and she realised that her mind was very ready to wound, perhaps even kill her.

She killed herself first, the easier of the two, for she had been trying to slay the darkness within since she was a child reciting a creed that was a contradiction. She threw her offhand lightsaber at the mirror, then in the same movement brought her violet lightsaber around in a two handed sweep, too strong for her mirror to parry with her weaker offhand, her main hand caught off position by parrying the thrown lightsaber. Meetra immediately rolled out of harm’s way as Revan’s lightsabers scythed through the space where she had been, an instant too late.

“ No!” The vision of Revan cried out as her mirror fell, and it was a perfect simulacrum of his voice. He wheeled on her, gloves creaking as his grip on his lightsabers tightened. “Why, Meetra? Tell me. Why?”

Her voice caught in her throat. “That’s not me. This is not you. Not anymore.”

“This is what I am and what I always was. You just closed your eyes to the truth.”

If losing a Padawan messed with a knight’s head, as Atton observed, then what did losing her do to Revan? So she watched for the opening, parrying his furious blows as she waited, reading his moves from the memory of hundreds of sparring sessions, until she saw her opening and ran him through with her lightsaber. He sank to his knees. She wanted to tell him what she had never said. What she should have said. But this would be just saying those words to herself, and she had done that far too many times. As the vision faded, he said in words that were lost to the void, “You know why, Mee. You do know…”

It began with Revan, and it would end with him. Her tears fell on the dust of Korriban, and her grief was left to linger long after she had gone, a whispered memory of love that could not be silenced by the hatred in that dead place.

Chapter 17: Bastila

Chapter Text

The last of the Jedi gathered in the Jedi Temple at Coruscant. Better Coruscant than Dantooine, where the memories of the masters’ dead faces was all too fresh. No, they had been worse than dead. Just empty wounds in the Force—an ugly reflection of what she was. Meetra had closed Kavar’s blue eyes with a shaking hand, bidding farewell to one of her oldest friends. Most of the other Jedi knights and Padawans from Dantooine had followed her to their deaths at Malachor V, and all that was left of them was what she carried with her. She still held the echoes of their screams, but also those golden days before the wars, when they could look forward to becoming historians or diplomats or healers, and training was just to keep their bodies strong. Some had wanted to keep living in that bubble. But war had come to the Jedi in the end, by Revan’s hand. And now they had to rebuild the Order on the rubble that remained.

“How does it feel to be back here?” Mical was carrying a stack of data pads from the archives, and he glanced over his shoulder at Atris. The pale woman stood a ways behind him, her hands fisted in the coarse fabric of her brown robe, looking like a lost child.

“Five years of neglect has taken its toll. There’s much to do.” She ran her fingers over the walls. Even this place had not been safe. Someone had left blaster scorch marks over there, and here was a lightsaber’s scoring. Still, it had to be said that the Jedi temple would have been a poor place to linger if someone was specifically killing Jedi across the galaxy, and she could think of at least four Jedi who would have been stubborn enough to stay. She wondered if they had survived.

“Admiral Onasi promised that we would have the help that we need to revive the Order.” The word ‘we’ sounded more pointed to her than it actually was. Mical didn’t suspect a thing. It wasn’t in his nature. Visas took Atris’s hand and led her away, speaking to the older woman in a low voice. Those who had touched the Dark Side shared a unique understanding, and Atris had derived much comfort from Visas in recent days.

“How many others have come?”

“Just a handful so far, but more will come as the word spreads. One of them asked to speak with you before we gather.”

“Who is it?”

“Bastila Shan. She saved the Republic with her battle meditation.”

Meetra recalled her as a rather obnoxious, conceited adolescent, but she kept the thought to herself. She and Revan had also enjoyed their fair share of unflattering appellations. “Where is she?”

“Droid workshop.” He shrugged in response to the question in Meetra’s face. “Bao-Dur tried to evict her, but I’m afraid that he did not have much luck.”

“Bao-Dur shouldn’t be lifting anything heavier than a sonic screwdriver. Get Mira to corral him and make him take a nap. I’ll meet you in the council chambers. I’ve always wondered if those chairs are comfortable.” Meetra grinned at Mical and headed down a familiar corridor. The door opened with a hiss to reveal a mess of rusted equipment and spare parts, which drew a reproachful click of the tongue from Meetra.

Bastila was standing in the middle of it all, arms wrapped around herself. There was a flash of recognition when their eyes met. “So…you are the Jedi exile.”

Meetra nodded, uncertain if Bastila even knew her name. “Yes. We have met before.”

“Have we?” she said, mostly to herself. “Maybe, although that time hardly mattered.” Her eyes were fixed on some point in the past rather than Meetra herself. “I suppose I’m not making much sense, am I? I spent so much time meditating, waiting for him.

“Waiting for…Revan?” Meetra wondered if she should confess that she had watched the message stored in T3’s memory banks.

“I don’t know why this was the first place he visited when he came to the temple five years ago. I found him here, and then, he…he left me. And he was kind—“ she choked a little on the word, “—which is somehow worse.”

Meetra’s gaze found the outlines of the workbench that they had shared, shoved into a corner, buried under a broken maintenance droid and a pile of circuit boards. Her explanation was brief and to the point. “He spent a lot of time here.” So had she, until they had been forced apart. But after that she had simply exchanged one droid workshop for another, and instead of bumping elbows with Revan, it was listening to his voice crackle over their secret audio channel, sometimes guiding her through a tricky circuit or gnarly bit of programming, mostly just talking.

Bastila exhaled a slow breath. “He was right. I never really did know him.”

“I don’t think anyone can claim to truly know Revan.”

“Not even you?”

“No.” She had made her peace with that. “Once, perhaps, but not anymore. I haven’t seen him since the end of the Mandalorian Wars.” Almost eleven years. Was he counting time by the same metric of separation? He did in his years between Coruscant and Dantooine.

“I thought that maybe—he would have searched for you.”

There was a question in that statement, and one with murky origins at that. Meetra shrugged. “Why would he?”

“I know that you were the only other person to share a bond with him. And that you left his army at the end of the war.” Bastila seemed determined to excavate Meetra’s old wounds as part of the process of examining her own.

Meetra raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t think the Jedi kept records of all that.”

The younger woman blinked dark-lashed eyes, and Meetra averted her eyes politely, not wanting to call attention to the fact that Bastila was fighting back tears. “I studied his past after he left, trying to understand what it was that he sought, even if he didn’t know it himself. The council had let him access the same records. Carth still heard from him occasionally after that, for a while at least. Then one day, he just vanished with the Ebon Hawk. Five years later, you were the one who turned up in that ship. Those of us that he left behind were trying to understand why and how.”

“Long story. It begins with the Sith and also ends with the Sith, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise.” She studied Bastila’s pale face, youth worn away by five years of grief. “You obviously care for Revan a great deal. And you said—the other person who shared a bond with him?”

Bastila pressed her lips together into a hard line of pain. “He and I were bonded as well, after I healed him from the brink of death. Although I suppose that I’m the other person in this story, really.”

“You were bonded?”

“Our bond dissipated as his memories returned. Now, I wonder if the bond between Revan and I only formed because there was already a void where your bond had been, and he was reaching out for you with the last of his strength. As he was dying, Revan’s thoughts were of what he had failed to protect. I couldn’t make sense of it, not at the time. Even now, what I saw has no meaning to me.” Bastila shook her head, and those girlish pigtails wobbled. Meetra seemed to recall that the younger Jedi had been wearing her hair that way since she was ten or so. “A cupboard. The Dantooine sky. A figure, standing in a door. And a voice calling his name. Your voice.” Bastila ran her hands over the opposite arms in slow circles, looking weary. “I suspected it was you. But I had to speak to you to be certain.”

There was a sudden sharp familiarity, a feeling of reality shifting into focus—she had known that this conversation would come to pass. Meetra would have to analyse the information later. “You said when his memories returned…what happened to him?”

Bastila’s eyes were bleak. “Were you ever told the truth of Revan’s return?”

The exile shook her head with a small laugh. “I thought that some Republic propagandist drunk on juma was allowed free rein there.”

The younger woman’s chuckle turned into a sound that was almost a sob. “I was part of the Jedi strike team that was to capture Revan, when Malak fired on his ship. Revan was mortally wounded in that attack, and I healed him. After retrieving us, the council chose to imprint a false personality on him, that of a Republic soldier under my command.”

Meetra drew and released a steady breath, keeping emotion out of it. What had been done to Revan was a terrible thing, but he had been systematically dismantling the Republic as he might have done with a malfunctioning droid. There might be no other chance to hear Bastila’s side of the story. “So what happened next?”

“They trained him as a Jedi again, and then he did as they had hoped. Found the Star Maps, and destroyed the Star Forge. Then he left.” Bastila brushed a tear from the corner of her eye.

A ten second description of how the course of history had been changed irrevocably. “I’m sorry. You clearly cared for him a great deal.” Meetra said gently. “Perhaps he left because he cared for you too, and because he wished to keep you from danger.” Kreia had said as much about Revan.

“No,” she said in a hollow voice. “It wasn’t me that he was protecting. It was you.”

A corner of Meetra’s mouth tugged sideways without any specific instruction to do so. “I think there’s been a logical leap of some distance and with a rather sideways trajectory there.”

The younger woman looked at Meetra with a sad smile. “Even as we speak now, you remind me of him. A quip for everything.”

“A quip keeps one well equipped,” she shot back, a phrase that she and Revan had exchanged many a time amidst good-natured bickering, but there was no hint of recognition in Bastila’s face. She wondered how much Revan had lost. “It helps to believe that the Force has a sense of humour.”

“Is that what you believe? That all this happened because of the will of the Force?” Bastila encompassed the universe with a broad sweep of her arm.

Meetra’s smile was crooked. “Ah, the eternal debate. Come, walk with me.” Without waiting for an answer, she swept out of the workshop, her feet taking her down a path that she had not walked since she was a child. Bastila followed her after a brief pause, her stride now lacking her previous absolute decision and conviction.

The Room of a Thousand Fountains had indeed fallen silent. Meetra wandered among the empty fountains and pools, remembering word games and rainbows. Babbling brooks, running rills, frothy foam, sleepy streams, rushing rivers, placid pools…an absolute alliterative addiction. The rainbows in the spray of water when the light was just right, then the rainbows that two apprentices made from food colouring and wilful mischief. She and Revan had left their marks on the galaxy in the scars of war, but these joyful days had passed without a trace.

Meetra made her way to the far corner of the room, pleased to see that her memory had not failed her. The control panel was locked, but these days, that wasn’t a barrier for her. “All that I have done—every good thing and every bad thing, was my decision. To deny my responsibility or to pretend that I was a puppet of the Force would be a lie. The consequences of those actions are mine to bear.”

“But what if the Force was what led you to that moment? If the Force was responsible for every event in your life that shaped you and influenced the decisions that you made at every turn?”

The panel came open and she flicked a few switches, studied the dim screen before walking away again. She came to a stop before the largest waterfall in the room, or rather, what had been, then turned to Bastila. “Maybe I will never know for sure. But all I can do is keep moving forward.”

“I thought it was the will of the Force that I saved Revan’s life. That we were bonded.”

“Whatever it is that you believe, whatever your reasons were for saving him, and helping him back to the light—thank you.”

“It was he who saved me from the dark side.”

Meetra smiled a little. “Maybe he helped. But the path was yours to walk. I think we’ve chosen the hardest of paths. Not just you and I, but others you’ll meet today have done the same. To shoulder the weight of the past and wear its scars, and with that burden, step into the future, trying to walk the right path, and to atone. To make this choice, day after day.”

“I think…I understand.”

The exile closed her eyes, felt the currents and eddies of the Force, like the rush of a warm sea, then she pulled at it and a switch clicked into place. There was a distant rattling that turned into a rumble, then a trickle of brown water dripped from the rocks above. The trickle became a clear stream, although not quite the rush of water that it had once been. Meetra reached into the water and flicked her hand, sending a spray of drops across the air, the faintest impression of a rainbow appearing for a moment.

“Then are you ready to walk your path again?”

“Yes. I have waited long enough.” Bastila looked at the water with equal parts bemusem*nt and wonder. “Where does your path lead next, that it is so difficult?”

Meetra straightened, drying her hand on her robe. “Wherever I need to go. And right now, that’s to the meeting. If I start nodding off, you have my full permission to throw a datapad at me.”

Chapter 18: Deserter

Chapter Text

She slept poorly on solid ground without the thrum of a ship engine after all her years of wandering, even if one didn’t take the nightmares into account. At three o’clock in the morning, Meetra sat up in the bunk that she had occupied as a child, then cast her senses outwards. The others were asleep, her mind quiet without the hum of background noise from their minds. There was nothing to pack. She had left most of her sparse belongings on the ship, and T3 had been left to pack her friends’ things into storage crates at the docks while everyone had been busy at the temple. She had learned to make herself small, indistinct to Force users, sentients and droids alike, but the temple halls were deserted in any case. She wished she could be there to see both this place and Dantooine come alive again, but her Padawans would see it through.

T3 opened the landing ramp with a chirped complaint, and the source of the droid’s woes was standing there with his arms folded. “Running away, Surik?”

Meetra felt one corner of her mouth tug sideways. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Really? You happen to be talking to one of the foremost galactic experts in deserting, and it sure looks like it to me.” Atton stepped aside to let her go past him, although he made sure to keep her between him and the landing ramp, wary that she might try to literally kick him off the ship—a justified precaution. “Need any company?”

Meetra ran her tongue over chapped lips, remembering what Kreia had said about Revan having to leave all that he loved behind. Bastila, crying quietly amidst piles of metal and plasteel. The doom that waited in dark places. And Revan, fighting a war without end. Atton closed the loading ramp, eyeing her cautiously all while. “Besides, if I’m not around to bail you out of trouble, who knows what could happen?”

“You can’t come,” she said. “Because it’ll get us both killed.”

“So I should just let you die alone? Because I’ll tell you right now, that isn’t going to happen.”

Meetra laughed mirthlessly. “Ah, you’re being serious. Dead serious, as it were. And what should happen instead? I should let you follow me to your death? As I’ve led so many others? Didn’t Mical tell all of you about how I bind people to me using the Force? Didn’t that make you question why you followed me to Malachor V, and why you’re here now?”

His throat worked as he swallowed, then he grasped her hand and brought her knuckles to his lips, his touch warm against her cold fingers. “I’m here, because this is exactly where I want to be.”

“Did you even hear what I just said?” she demanded, unable to keep her voice steady.

“Yeah.” Hazel eyes held her gaze. “Sure did.”

She wanted to trace the determined line of his mouth with her thumb. Instead she pulled free of his grasp. “I crawled in your head without you even knowing it.” Words aimed at an old wound. If hurting him saved his life, then so be it.

He laughed, just a little. “Not exactly. No.” Draw, eight makes fifteen—not my head, but my—switch the face of the plus two minus two card, totals are thirteen seventeen.

She winced at the volume of his thoughts as he reinforced his walls, but saw an opportunity. “You’re wrong. I am in your head, more than you’ll ever know.”

“Meetra,” he said with the air of a weary teacher, “No matter how much pazaak we play, you’re still a terrible liar. So, where are we going again?”

“You are getting off this ship, and you are going to be nice to Mical while you rebuild the Jedi Order with the others.”

Atton arched an eyebrow. “If that’s your idea of persuading me to stay, you’re doing a great sales pitch for why I should come along.”

“Fine, you’re going to get off this ship, take a transport to the nearest cantina, find a friendly, buxom Twi-Lek lady, and enjoy a happy retirement, occasionally taking a pilot gig just for the fun of it.”

“Warmer,” he conceded, “But no thanks. Besides, no way I’m going to let that tin can fly my ship. I mean, our ship.”

“You’re a survivor. I get people around me killed. It’s not going to work out.”

“I’ve done a kriffing amazing job so far, if you ask me. Even survived a lightsaber duel with a nearly immortal Sith Lord. Now there’s something to stick on a Jedi résumé. So yeah, I do think everything is going to be just fine.” Atton headed to the co*ckpit, knowing that Meetra would follow.

Kreia was a liar, but she had said that the Force watched out for ones such as him. Atton sank into the pilot’s seat, wearing the smug smirk of someone who had the last word. Meetra spun the seat around to face her. “If you want to come, promise me something.”

Atton raised an eyebrow. “You gonna tell me what it is before I sign on the dotted line?”

“You said you’re a deserter. So promise me that. Swear to me that you will leave if you decide that you don’t want a part of this fight. And if push comes to shove, you will run rather than throw your life away.”

He threw up his walls, a buzz of hyperspace routes. “Only because you asked so nicely.”

“Atton. Look at me. Promise me.”

“I promise.” His tone was flippant. The average cantina owner wouldn’t have served him a single drink on a tab.

“I guess you’ve been saddled with a honest Jedi face too, because that was about as believable as me saying that I didn’t eat the last pack of moss chips.” She leaned in, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Show me that you mean it. Promise me that you know that you are free to leave, at any time, and you will not waste your life on a fight that you don’t believe in.”

The muscles around his mouth went tight. “I promise,” he said, the edge of a lie concealed in his voice.

“Close. But no, I still don’t believe you.”

“I promise,” he whispered, and this time he sounded resigned. It was as good as she was going to get. She settled into the co-pilot’s seat as she often did, because space flight was still a marvel even after all these years. Atton started the preflight checks, thumbing switches and muttering to himself as he watched the display.

As the engine fired up, he said with excessive cheer for someone who had no idea where he was going, led by—in his words—the worst Jedi that he had ever met, "So, where to now? I mean, because last time, we were heading toward this mining colony on the edge of space, and there was this Sith Lord, and..."

Chapter 19: A Long Story

Chapter Text

“If we weren’t playing Republic Senate rules…” Meetra held out her upturned palm. T3 chirped an upbeat tune.

“Is that trash compactor laughing at me?” Atton threw his cards down, looking sour. The droid beeped again.

“It seems the apprentice has surpassed the master.” She was going to milk this bantha for all it was worth.

“Oh, really? If I’m the master, does that mean that I get to turn this ship around and head back to the Republic?”

“You’re only the master in pazaak, Rand. I’m still the biggest, baddest Jedi on this ship.” Meetra smiled crookedly. “At least until we find Revan.”

Atton gathered the cards and shuffled them, leaning back in his chair, but Meetra knew him well enough to recognise the slight edge in his voice. “So, uh, were you and Revan close?”

She rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. “Yes. We were.”

“Just how close are we talking?”

“It’s…a long story.”

“We have time.” Atton starting dealing them in, his gaze fixed on the cards. “Another day or so before we drop into orbit at the latest backwater paradise of your choice.”

Atton deserved the truth. She watched his deft hands distribute the cards. “I don’t know where to begin, but ask, and I will answer.”

“Did you know him before the war?”

“We met on Coruscant when I was a fresh apprentice, hardly more than a youngling, and not long before he became a Padawan.”

“Okay,” he said, dragging out the first syllable. “Your go. I thought you trained on Dantooine.”

“Draw, please. Plus seven makes fifteen. Hmm. I did. I was sent to Dantooine about a year later.”

“So what will it be? Draw? Hold?” Atton ran a finger over his cards with a snap. “Do all Jedi get sent to Dantooine eventually?”

“Not all.” She placed a plus four card on the pile. “I’m done. Your play.”

“And Revan?” He drew a ten.

“He stayed on Coruscant.”

“Huh. Any particular reason for that? One makes eleven. I’m going to draw again.”

Meetra blew out a sigh. “They wanted to separate us…because we had a Force bond.”

Atton’s hand stilled over the deck. “Yeah? So what happened?”

She shrugged as she drew the card for him. “Two makes thirteen. We just learned to hide it better, and it survived the years of separation. We were bonded until the end of the Mandalorian Wars.”

“Until Malachor V.” Atton drew another card but kept it face down, clamped between two fingers. “So, two Jedi hiding a bond. Seems like there was more to it if it had to be so secret.”

“We were children when we were separated. And we weren’t going to let a bunch of grown-ups tell us that we had be to parted, because obviously they were just annoyed by all the pranks. Revan had always been determined. Headstrong and a damned pain in the neck for the masters.” The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Besides, who else were we going to talk to about droids?”

Atton snorted. “Seriously? You’re telling me that you defied the Jedi so that you could talk about droids?”

“Well, yes. Part of it anyway.” Meetra blew out a breath through her nose. “We could hear each other’s heartbeat, even from across the galaxy, even in all those years that we were apart. We could not lose that. Could not see an existence without the bond.” She curled her knees into her chest, hugging herself. “Guess we were wrong about that, in hindsight. At the end of the war, when I was severed from the Force, he still wanted me by his side. But I couldn’t follow him. Not anymore. No matter how much he…we wanted it.”

There was a long silence. Atton ran a fingertip back and forth over the edge of the card in his hand, his jaw set and brow furrowed. “Did he love you?”

“Does it matter?” Meetra put her hands on his, turning the card in his hand face up. When her fingers grazed his, there was a brief cacophony of engine sequencers.

“Don’t know why I asked, when I know the answer,” he muttered. He threw the card on the pile, distracted from his fortuitous victory. “Best hope Revan hasn’t adopted Sion’s habit of sleeping with vibroblades. Most people don’t get to enjoy the love of a single Sith Lord, and you had two!”

If Kreia counted, she could make that three, although she suspected Atton was only counting a certain type of love and intimacy. “Sith lords aren’t really my type.”

“You have a type?” There was a fragile hope in his eyes.

Deflection was part of the basic Jedi curriculum. “It’s not the well-endowed Twi-Lek women that you favour.”

“Since when were we talking about me? Besides, that’s not actually true.”

“T3 logs all holonet activity, you know.” Meetra rubbed the inner corner of one eye. “I looked at some of those because I didn’t recognise the addresses, wanted to make sure that we weren’t being sliced.”

Atton occasionally reminded her of her attire or lack thereof when they first met—it seemed to be a fond memory for him, while Meetra’s primary recollection was feeling both incredibly cold and annoyed at the Force. Despite this, he floundered when he connected the dots on precisely how much she knew about his leisure entertainment preferences. “I didn’t—how long have you—that tin can, I’m going to—I was trying to keep the old witch—“

“It’s okay,” she said, trying to sound soothing but unable to conceal an undercurrent of laughter. “It was…ah, educational. I didn’t know that lekku could do that.” And there, he’d been set on a different conversational track, although most Jedi masters would have been aghast at this particular method.

Atton stared at her like she was a bomb that was about to explode. “Educational?”

“Figure of speech.” She shrugged. “It isn’t exactly the sort of fare that was stored in the Jedi archives. Get some rest. T3 and HK will wake us if anything happens.”

He looked relieved at being given an out. “Sure. Maybe we’ll even find Revan before we run out of credits.”

“We will. He’s close.” The Force was a current that she could not swim against. She and Revan would collide one more time, and it remained to be seen if they would drown each other again.

Chapter 20: A Jedi Reunion Party

Chapter Text

Someone was following him.

It was almost a relief. The last few days had been restless, filled with the ominous sense of storm clouds heavy on the horizon. Something was coming. He hadn't survived for this long by ignoring his instincts.

The streets were crowded as dusk fell, people of all species making their way to or from work. This city was dominated by a gargantuan shipyard, where any ship of any make could be repaired and new ships were cobbled together from the corpses of old ones. Shift change happened twice per day, and that was when he moved among the crowds, listening for the information that he needed. Hushed voices complained of cruel overseers, under loud invitations to the cantina and bargaining for food in the markets that lined the streets around the shipyard. Surface thoughts contained mundane ruminations on credits, laundry, holovids, family. And he knew that the Sith would be here, pulling the strings from the shadows, because controlling this shipyard meant controlling transportation in this entire sector.

That would have to wait. Reconnaissance required patience, caution. He had to neutralise this threat first. The person following him blended all too well into the crowd, surface thoughts indistinguishable from the babble, but there was something that was almost a sound just beyond the edge of hearing. He headed into a side alley, palming a vibrodagger. A lightsaber was an overly definitive statement of what he was, and he preferred a more straightforward solution where possible. The alley was lined with dumpsters, so he ducked behind one and waited.

Light footsteps came to a stop, just around the side of the dumpster. He sprang into action, reaching out to grapple the stalker, but his hand met empty air. The stalker had already dodged backwards, face hidden by a hood. Hands came up: human, unarmed, and a voice from his past said, "Really, Revan, is that any way to say hello?"

Another voice—human as well, male,and decidedly less friendly—said, "Drop the blade." He turned to see a man with a disruptor pistol trained on him, approaching from the other end of the alley.

The woman pushed her hood back. "That's not necessary, Atton." Dark eyes gazed steadily at Revan, who felt like he had been thrown out of an airlock. He doubted his mind for a moment, wondered if eleven years of absence and yearning had finally driven him to madness. She tilted her head, amused by his search for an answer in her face. “What are you looking for all the way out here? A solder laser?”

The truth was a lightning bolt, and in its wake, it left the spark of her presence, tingling through every nerve. He laughed for the first time in half a decade, the rusty sound of an old droid creaking to life again, then breathed her name. "Meetra." His mantra against loneliness and despair, a reason to fight a war without end. He sheathed his blade and stepped closer, unable to tear his gaze from the way her eyes crinkled into a familiar wry look.

“I wasn’t sure if you remembered me.” Her lips quirked into the curve of a smile so familiar that a thousand lost memories pounded against the back of his skull. “I heard what happened during the war.”

“I didn’t remember you when I didn’t know my own name. But afterwards—there is no remembering myself without remembering you. I think you misplaced the solder laser. Again. I found something better while I was looking though.”

“You can’t use a sonic screwdriver to weld. Nor a hydrospanner.”

“But if all you have is a hammer—“ The words came back to him.

“—then who took the whole spacing toolbox?” She replied with a small laugh. It was the same bad joke that stretched all the way back to the droid workshop in Coruscant.

"Right, we’ve checked that everyone remembers each other’s names, and that he hasn’t gone senile in his old age," the other man said in acerbic tones. “And that was either some weird code or even weirder innuendo. Not sure which is worse. Now can we please take this touching reunion somewhere behind closed doors?"

Revan swallowed his questions for the moment—this Atton was right. "Follow me. I have a place near here."

His room was sparse, with a small toilet and shower in the corner, a creaking nutrient dispenser, and a single cot that was a sorry affair of a tarp on a frame with a threadbare blanket. He cast his senses in a radius around them, confirming that they were alone for the moment. When he refocused his attention, Atton was leaning on the door, head co*cked as he listened for intruders, and Meetra was looking around, hands clasped in the same way that he had seen in the droid workshop, walking the grasslands of Dantooine, in dozens of Republic warships and command centres. "I have questions for you," she said in a quiet voice, "But I imagine that you have questions as well."

"What are you doing here, Mee?" He realised a little too late that he might not have the right to call her that anymore, but she let it pass.

"Finding you," she answered simply. "To ask you that same question."

"How?"

"I have my ways," she said, mimicking the crackly voice of an old master, and there was a gleam of mischief in her dark eyes. "You haven't answered my question yet."

“Fighting an old enemy…the same one whose hand I saw in the Mandalorian Wars. Fighting the true Sith.”

“Kreia wasn’t lying about that then.” Meetra exhaled and looked away.

“Kreia?” Revan didn’t recognise the name.

Meetra shrugged. “I think it was Master Kae. I met her after the other two Sith Lords had cast her out—or rather she sought me out. I can’t be more sure than that.” She tapped her temple. “She made me think that the Jedi Council were the ones who cut me off from the Force. Then the Council told me that I was the one responsible for that, before they tried to…” she trailed off. “It’s a long story.”

Atton snorted from his station at the door. “I’ve heard that excuse before. But I was there, and Meetra does attract trouble like a leaking fuel tanker steered through a swarm of mynocks.”

Revan had to concede that the other man did have a point, even though the Meetra that he remembered might have kicked someone into orbit for that sort of comment. “Just slow down. Sith Lords? New ones? After Malak and I?”

Meetra tilted her head before she answered, still wary of their surroundings in the dismal flophouse. “Yes, unfortunately. It seems that Sith reproduce like gizka these days. And removing the machinery of the Sith isn’t exactly like decapitating the proverbial snake. If we’re going to catch up on five years of worth of galactic events and name drop Sith Lords, maybe we should just do this on the ship.”

“Remind me to tell you about the time that someone dumped a crate of gizka on my ship. But yes, if you will have me.”

Atton nodded, straightening out of his slouch. “At least we can sit down there, and I can have a drink while you have a little Jedi reunion party.”

“I gave you a Jedi membership card, in case you’ve forgotten that little detail,” Meetra retorted before turning back to Revan. “I have a feeling you’ll like the ship.”

Chapter 21: A Nerf Metaphor

Chapter Text

Revan whistled when he saw the Ebon Hawk. “How did you pick up this old girl?”

“Thank T3 and Kreia.”

The astromech droid whirred over to Revan at top speed, beeping a long message. Revan listened and then patted the droid on his central processor. “Thank you, T3. You did well.”

“Let’s just get this clear,” Atton said over his shoulder as he walked up the landing ramp. “I’m flying the ship.”

Meetra grinned at Revan. “His crash statistics aren’t great, but his survival statistics are near perfect.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Panelling over large portions of the ship had been replaced in a hodgepodge of whatever was available, giving the ship a decidedly patchwork appearance. Someone had tried to paint her but had run out of paint, motivation, or both.

“Have I ever crashed when we weren’t being shot at? Maybe you should just stop collecting enemies and learn to make more friends.” Revan noted Atton’s gaze tended to linger on Meetra, presumably for the usual reason.

HK-47 was waiting at the top of the ramp, blaster rifle at the ready. “Relieved statement: Greetings, Master Revan. This unit is pleased by your return, as the other meatbags have applied unnecessary restrictions to my behaviour core.”

“No murdering unless I say so, basically,” Meetra said, unperturbed by the droid’s red visual inputs following her. “HK, T3, we don’t want to be disturbed. Power down the ship, but keep up surveillance and let us know if anyone approaches.”

Atton made a beeline for the co*ckpit, then reappeared in the main hold with a bottle of juma, which drew a look of disapproval from Meetra. “Throat’s dry,” the pilot said in a tone that suggested his meaning was more metaphorical than literal. “Besides, you two seem like you need it.” He kicked open a locker, produced three cups and poured them all a round.

“So. Sith Lords.” Revan picked up a cup as he sat down and took a sip. It was pretty decent juma, and was light years better than anything produced out here.

Meetra flopped into a chair across the table, lounging in the same way that had earned her many a lecture in the distant past. “Yep. Two, or rather, three. One was called Nihilus, who was a walking wound in the Force—I think basically someone else wounded by the war and who embraced the Dark Side. Single-handedly slurped up the entire planet of Katarr and everyone on it like an energy drink. Including the Jedi conclave being held there. I’ve strongly suggested to Carth that the Republic ban hom*ophone planet names like Katarr or Cathar. Sith seem to like destroying them for some reason.” Despite her flippant tone, Mee’s expression was grim.

Revan drummed his fingers on his glass. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. How did you defeat him?”

“Republic scientists were sorry to have missed seeing what happened when one black hole tried to devour another.” Meetra grinned, although it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “He was a walking wound, I’m a walking wound, and I didn’t prove to be a satisfying snack.”

“I see that you’re as cavalier about your safety as ever,” Revan replied, his voice taut with displeasure.

Atton barked a harsh laugh. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Meetra shrugged. “Had to be me. I thought it might work. And it did.”

Revan didn’t harbour much hope that Meetra was capable of changing that aspect of her nature, but while attempting such a conversation was a necessity, it was also a task for later. Instead he asked, “You met Carth? And you’re on a first name basis with him?”

Atton snorted. “You’re jealous of that geezer? Wow, wait till you hear about the next Sith Lord.”

“Carth took an interest because I was the only Jedi they could find. I thought he was quite dashing, actually. Had a nice voice, never crashed the Ebon Hawk even once—“ There was a familiar mischievous curl to Meetra’s lips.

“Hey, wait a minute—“

“Can we get back to talking about the Sith?” Revan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not something that I ever expected to have to ask.”

The pilot—recovered from his little fit of indignation—leaned back in his seat with a smirk. “Well, the other Sith Lord was a walking corpse who looked like he slept with vibroblades, and he was in love with the prettiest Jedi on this ship.”

“Sion.” Meetra made no comment about the veracity of the villainous crush. “Atton survived a duel with him. He was sustaining his life far beyond the point of any normal human endurance, using the Dark Side of the Force.”

Revan scrutinised the other man again, who was currently doing a flawless impression of being no more than the average self-proclaimed flyboy that inhabited most cantinas. “And Meetra trained you?”

Atton shrugged. “Yeah. Guess that makes her a pretty good teacher. She’s the one who ended taking down all the Sith in the end.”

Revan hummed noncommittally and filed the information away for later. An adult novice Jedi who survived an encounter with a Sith Lord either meant an incompetent Sith Lord on the cusp of being deposed, or some form of teaching that bypassed the barriers of teaching an old kath hound new tricks. “And the last one?”

“Kreia. She manipulated me so subtly that I didn’t know about it until after…after she killed the last of the Council. She muddied the truth, and tried to forge me into the expression of her ideals. She concealed herself from the council before that last meeting on Dantooine. She cut them off from the Force.” Meetra’s voice faltered. “Vrook, Zez-Kai Ell, and…Kavar. Do you remember him?”

“I’m sorry. He spoke to me of you, before I left, but it was only afterwards that I remembered that he was a good friend to you for many years.”

Her hand dropped to her offhand lightsaber hilt. Mee was still awful at hiding her emotions. “He was. But the council…wanted to cut me off from the Force again. I don’t know what you’ve found out here, but the Sith in the Republic bore the wounds and echoes of war. The Council thought that I was too much of a risk. That I would become the next Nihilus, I suppose.”

Revan sucked in a breath through his nose. “The years didn’t give them much wisdom.” He wondered what he would have done, had he been there.

“They were scattered, and a little lost themselves, I think. They went into hiding after Katarr. Many were hunted and killed by the Sith despite that. They also didn’t so much as send the Republic a memo, so the Republic went looking for Jedi, somehow found me and sent a cruiser to pick me up beyond the Outer Rim, the Sith attacked, I woke up on a mining colony, Kreia and Atton were there…look, a lot happened in the last year. Point is, Kreia said that she was both your first and your last master.”

“Master Kae,” he said. Kae had filled his head with thoughts of destiny and strength. He still wondered if this too was a path that might have branched. “Was she the one who reconnected you to the Force?”

“Yes. In a sense. I’m using my bonds to other Force-sensitives to indirectly connect to the Force. I had a Force bond with Kreia. A deep one. Sion cut her hand off, and I felt it.” Meetra rubbed her left hand absently, flexing the fingers. “All part of her plan, I think. She told me that our lives were joined, manipulated some of my memories so I would do what she wanted. So I’m working my way back to the truth. At the end, she told me that you were out here, beyond the Outer Rim, fighting the Sith.”

“Is that what you came for? The truth?” Revan wanted it to be just that, something simple, and not for her to join his solitary crusade. “Then ask, and I will answer to the best of my ability. Although I’m still surprised that you found me.”

“The Force led me to you,” she said with no hint of irony and the pilot rolled his eyes. “Did Kreia—Kae, I mean, send no one else?”

“I never asked her to send anyone. And of every soul in the galaxy…you had to be one to find me.” Revan shook his head.

“Force and its sense of humour, right?” Meetra’s grin was weary. “She said I was a dead spot in the Force, in which its will could be denied. Kreia wanted to kill the Force, if she could have figured out how. She didn’t enjoy being a puppet.”

Atton scoffed. “Funny, given how she tried to pull everyone’s strings. This is the first time I’m hearing all this.” There was a small bite to his words. Meetra looked over at him, apology in her eyes, and the anger melted from Atton’s face. Poor bastard was in deep, drowning with his sole lifeline tethered to Meetra. Revan knew what that felt like.

“I was discussing this with Bastila before we left, as a matter of fact. The Force and destiny and free will.” Meetra sometimes wielded her gaze like a thrown blade, a fact that he’d forgotten until this moment.

“So Bastila survived.” He picked his words with care. “I am glad. She has been through much.”

“That she has.” Meetra glanced at Atton and decided to let it slide for the moment. “For the record, I still feel like the Force is leading me like a nerf on a rope. But once I get to my destination, I get to choose to either eat grass or kick the herder. Maybe both. Maybe neither of those things.”

Revan laughed. “Hundreds of hours of Jedi philosophy classes, distilled into a nerf metaphor.”

“Brevity used to get us out of class faster, remember?” Mee grinned at him. “I was much more inspirational when I spoke with Bastila, I’ll have you know. So much so that she said that it was time to stop waiting, and to move forward on her path.”

Revan nodded, his own smile fading at the thought of Bastila waiting this last six years for a man who did not love her and who would not return. “That’s…good.”

Atton’s eyes had a glaze of utter disinterest. “I don’t need to sit through gossip about all your Jedi buddies.” He seemed to regret the words as they left his mouth. Not many Jedi buddies left who weren’t dead. None of them vocalised that. Pointless, when it was an obvious fact.

At Meetra’s nod, the pilot pushed back his chair. “I’ll be in the co*ckpit if anyone needs me.” His eyes swept over Revan again, seemingly weighing if he could take the former Dark Lord of the Sith in a fight, then softened as he met Meetra’s gaze. He left, taking the bottle of juma with him.

“HK, give us some privacy,” Revan said.

“Bored acknowledgement: this unit shall monitor the external cameras.”

Meetra raised an eyebrow. “I see that I’ve already been demoted to secondary priorities for orders?”

Revan shrugged. “Nothing personal. I programmed the overrides years ago.”

“T3, go with HK please.” Meetra and Revan both smiled at the enthusiastic beeped reply.

Then for the first time in over a decade, they were finally alone together.

Chapter 22: A Proper Hello

Chapter Text

They sat in silence for several minutes, neither quite looking at the other. The blaze of Revan’s presence was unchanged, still reminding her of the heat of the Dantooine sun. Time had sharpened the angles of his face, and smiles no longer looked quite at home there, lasting for no more than the space of a breath.

“So…HK tells me that you kissed Bastila in the cargo hold.”

Revan’s eyebrows shot upwards before pulling together, a look of chagrin that seemed misplaced on the face of the former Dark Lord. “What? Please tell me that you’re joking.”

“You shouldn’t have installed such a sophisticated vocabulator. Mimicked her voice perfectly, although I somehow doubt that she referred to it as ‘pressing slimy mucus-covered lips together’.”

He winced, but had to laugh. “Ah, no. I don’t think that’s how she saw it. And now I’m regretting those humour algorithms.”

“She really was still waiting,” Meetra said in a quiet voice. “She loved you.”

“I kissed her once when I thought that my name was Pax, and that I was a smuggler recruited by the Republic before I was turned into a Jedi. That was the extent of it.” Revan was watching for her response, the muscles around his mouth and eyes tense.

Meetra had spent years imagining this conversation with Revan. He never did like conforming to expectations, and she still had not learned to say what she felt. “Kreia thought that perhaps you left her behind, as you couldn’t bring any that you loved here.”

“Mee, I think that at this point, it’s safe to say that taking anything that Kae said at face value is unwise. I never loved Bastila. I don’t say that to be cruel.” He sounded resigned. “She was very young and naive. The Jedi council should have done better with helping her shepherd an amnesiac Sith Lord.”

She still couldn’t bring herself to say what she had wanted to for so many years. “What was it like? Not remembering yourself?”

His gaze drifted over her right shoulder. “From the moment that I opened my eyes as Pax, the Force was dragging me along. All that I knew about myself sounded like I’d rehearsed it as a swindler’s tale of woe. The past was a smear, like looking out through a rain-streaked window. The present was too sharp, too loud. Battle was all that I knew. Everything else was a half forgotten dream, sometimes surfacing as a flash of insight or a sudden recollection, knowledge that was not anchored to any context or true understanding. Bastila was always there in my mind, mired in her own conflict with the Jedi ideals, struggling with her own fear of me, and then the feelings that came after. Oh, and those headaches.” He carded his fingers through his hair, cropped short again as it had been in his days as a Jedi knight. There were a few streaks of white in his hair, as well as in hers.

Meetra’s gaze followed the movement of his fingers, remembering how his hair had felt under her hands. “The archives had some holos of you before you decided to fly all the way here. I see you lost the beard and got a haircut.”

Revan laughed. “Some council member who mind wiped me even remembered to make me think I liked that look. They had to try to make it less obvious that the Dark Lord was running around the galaxy again.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Surprising that it worked for as long as it did. But I’d kept my face masked since…since our parting. So we flew around chasing maps to the Star Forge until we met Malak, which was sooner than the council wanted, and he gloated about how I couldn’t even remember myself. Bastila let herself get captured to save me, and Malak tortured her until she fell. She managed to break free of the Dark Side at the Star Forge. A pity it had to be destroyed though. The Republic could have used those ships. Too bad I had lost faith in the Republic by the time I activated it.”

“It sounds like you intentionally kept it a weapon to use against the Republic.”

He winced. “Probably. That does sound like something I’d do.”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not precisely. Some things are still out of focus.” He shrugged. “I can’t always remember the exact reasoning behind a certain course of action. There’s still some speculation and guesswork involved.”

“I see. What of Malachor V?” She had asked herself that question for years, and had the shape of an answer in her mind already. But she still wanted to hear what he had to say.

Revan was silent for several long moments, a bleak look in his eyes. “To end the war. And to force you to see things the way that I did. Obviously, it didn’t work.”

“You know me. Or used to. Contrary as always.”

He laughed a little, although there was a ragged edge of pain in the sound. “I know it’s been a long time. So…you and the pilot?” Revan’s meaning was obvious.

Meetra felt her smile fold inwards like a collapsing castle of pazaak cards. “No. While it’s not the only reason, I trained him. I wouldn’t take advantage of him like that.

A corner of Revan’s mouth twitched. “I doubt that your Padawan would see it the same way, but like master, like student.” When she raised an eyebrow, he deigned to elaborate further. “Kavar. I thought he would take you as his Padawan when your first master died. The Jedi Council excuse was paper thin, given that Vandar took you on. You didn’t think that I was teasing you back then for no good reason? As I recall, you turned a fantastic shade of crimson when I did.”

Meetra snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You devoted a lot of energy to annoying me, and you became far too good at it. It was no more than that.”

“Those were good times.” The creases around Revan’s eyes and mouth when he smiled had been etched deeper by the passage of time. “Swing past Dantooine between missions, short circuit your latest droid project, then fly off before you could force me to fix it.”

“You remember that too, then.” Trying to ascertain where they stood with each other was a novelty. “Do you also remember what you said to me when we parted at Malachor V?”

“I do.” His voice was quiet. “And so we have met again, at the end of all things.”

“The end of all things…do you expect to die out here?” Meetra tried to keep her voice steady and failed.

Revan shrugged. “Can’t exclude the possibility. The future is unclear, the present is hazardous.”

Meetra felt her lips press together. “And you say that I’m careless with my own safety? Look in a mirror, Revan. What are you doing out here?”

“Finishing what I started.” His eyes were as impregnable as a blast door, thoughts shuttered within.

“If you are trying kill an idea, that is not so easily done.”

His chuckle was resigned. “Yes, in a one man army, nothing happens in a hurry. But if I can destroy the Sith’s leadership structures, then I can buy the Republic some time, for them to prepare themselves, and for the Jedi to rebuild. That's where you’re needed.”

“It looks like you could use a hand.”

“No. This is not up for debate. Ask your questions, then go home.” Revan’s tone was flat.

“I don’t take orders from you anymore.” She could play this game too. He was the first to look away, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “You’re afraid,” she said, knowing it to be true even as she said it.

He lifted one finger. “No dogmatic lectures on the association of fear and the dark side, please. You know I hate those.”

“You’ll just have to spend the next month in meditation instead. Revan, you don’t have to be afraid for me.”

The furrow between his brows deepened. “That is having the opposite of the intended effect. But this is moot. This is not your fight.”

“And it’s yours alone?”

“Yes.” Revan’s ego was apparently still the size of a star system, so she had walked right into that one.

“If it’s a war of ideas, it’s not going to be won by one person swinging lightsabers. Even if that person is you.”

He shrugged. “I work with what I have.”

“We need to refuel the ship anyway. Maybe get some of the external damage repaired. And we can help you for a few days at the least.”

Revan had always been a pragmatist, and she knew that he would find it difficult to refuse help that came without a price. He answered in a measured tone, “Very well then. Just for now.”

“Good, that’s settled. Do you want to bunk down on the ship? We have some spare robes anyway, if you need some clean clothes to sleep in.”

“That’ll work. It’s been a while since I wore those. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention the use of robes as sleepwear to the new Jedi Council.” He smiled faintly. Both of them were dressed like spacers, jackets over pants and boots. “Going to give me the tour of the ship? Let’s see if you’re taking good care of her.”

“Yeah. Where do you want to start?”

He stood when she did, then hesitated before he came to a decision. “Let’s start with saying a proper hello then, since I was so rude the first time.” He stepped closer, then slowly, uncertainly, wrapped his arms around her, before he asked in a whisper, “Is this okay?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s fine.” She brought one arm around him and put her other hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat again, which was racing until he exhaled a slow breath and rested his cheek against the top of her head.

“I missed you.” He placed his hand over hers.

“I know. So did I.”

He dipped his face closer, and she felt one hot tear, then another track down along her cheek, which could have come from either of them, or both. She had never seen him cry in all the years that they had known each other, not even when she had left him in the fractured skies above Malachor V. Revan had been right. It was more than the Force that bound them together, and even all those years of separation had not been enough to cut those ties.

She didn’t see the shadow in the hallway to the co*ckpit, and neither did Revan.

Chapter 23: Sparring

Chapter Text

The pilot apparently found the idea of sleeping in the same dorm as Revan to be so distasteful that he stayed in the co*ckpit all night. Meetra slept poorly, and as a result, so did Revan, now that they were separated only by the width of the ship rather than by the span of the galaxy. Breakfast was a subdued affair, the air thick with unasked questions.

“While you have us hanging around, you should take the chance to spar.” Meetra wasn’t usually the one to offer a bout, but it was a safe, familiar option for two people were still not quite strangers, not yet friends again. And she did have a point in that he had not sparred in years.

Revan had planned to pick up where he left off with the reconnaissance, but that could wait until the evening shift change again. “Sure. Cargo bay?”

“Yeah. Don’t score the walls though. Bao-Dur—remember him? The tech from Malachor? He reinforced the walls, but there’s only so much you can do against a lightsaber without ploughing a stack of credits into durasteel that would chew up too much weight capacity.” She glanced at Atton. “We really need to find you somewhere with more space to train as well. You need the jump practice.”

Atton shrugged and drained his mug of caf. “Whatever you say, master. So long as this isn’t going to be like you and the Atris fan girl sparring. We’ve seen a shirtless Sith Lord, let’s not see one without his pants.”

Revan raised an inquiring eyebrow at Meetra who shrugged. “Atris had an Echani handmaiden, whom I ended up training as well. Brianna tended to stick to that aspect of Echani tradition, plus she had spent a lot of time on the Telosian pole before joining us and didn’t notice the cold, so she tended to hang around in her underclothes after a bout. Not that Atton minded, despite his protests to the contrary.” She turned to Atton. “Well, I say that you can spar with Revan too. Maybe melee or unarmed combat?”

“You’re the one who told me to stop carrying vibroblades.”

“Did you do as I said?” Meetra’s look was sceptical.

“Vibrodaggers are much easier to hide. Ask him.” Atton jerked his chin at Revan. “He wanted to stab you with one.”

Revan let the jibe fly past, a missile propelling itself into empty space. “Melee weapons then. Shall we begin?”

Meetra and Revan both shed their loose outer robes in the cargo bay, and they were wearing sleeveless tunics under the robes. Revan was pleased to see that she’d regained some of the muscle that she had lost on war rations. He walked to the other end of the cargo hold, a hilt in each hand as he rolled his neck with a crack. Force, he was getting old. “What do you want to do? The first form?”

“Sure. Just to warm up. Then we can see what sort of new tricks we’ve both learned.” She ignited her lightsabers, violet and silver still, the offhand hilt in the shorter style that Kavar had trained her to use. The pilot was leaning on a cargo container, the world-weary look leaving his eyes when he watched her.

“Indeed. Let’s see what these two old kath hounds can do.” Revan switched his own lightsabers on, the mirror of her colours, albeit both full length single blades.

“Who would have thought that the Dark Lord is just an imitator?” Atton said to no one in particular, with the sort of expression that usually accompanied the consumption of stale, vinegary juma. Revan briefly considered reminding Atton that he had picked up a lightsaber before Meetra had learned to walk, but he decided not to waste his breath.

“Went back to silver?’ Meetra asked.

“That’s what the cave on Dantooine gave me again. Both of these crystals.”

Meetra lifted one corner of her mouth into a brief half smile, then turned away, moving into the first posture of the first form. He followed suit, but she paused, darting a glance at Atton. “You should warm up too.”

“We don’t usually get the chance to ‘warm up’—“, he curled the second and third digits of both hands, “—when we get jumped.” Meetra’s response was a slight narrowing of her dark eyes. It was enough to make the other man’s resistance fizzle out like an overloaded shield. “Fine, fine.” He produced a lightsaber hilt from somewhere under his jacket and it hummed to life, revealing a single golden blade.

Meetra led them, her breaths and Revan’s in perfect synchrony, as was the arcs of their lightsabers. Atton kept up well enough—better than an adult who had learned it in just months should have been able to—but Revan could tell that it wasn’t quite burned into his muscle memory yet.

At the end of the form, Meetra gave Atton a small nod and he retreated to the sidelines again. Revan gripped both his lightsabers loosely, watching her as they both circled at a slow pace. It was always different with Meetra. Victory over her gave him no particular pleasure, which was just as well since she could usually fight him to a standstill. It was an anomaly in her duelling statistics, which used to be mediocre despite Kavar’s best efforts.

When they clashed, it was a series of rapid blows and parries before they both pulled away again, Meetra with a spin, Revan with a small jump. “You’ve improved,” he noted.

She shrugged. “By necessity, I suppose.”

“The people who created the Star Forge—the Rakatans—said that I ripped the knowledge of their language from their minds using the Force. I think you’ve done something similar.” He came at her again, a thrust, a wide arc, an overhead swing. She parried all three blows with perfect timing. Faced with a lesser opponent, she could have left them open for a counter strike.

Meetra was frowning. “Perhaps. Not consciously, but I can’t exclude the possibility.”

“It was the same for me.” He allowed her to test his defences, then went on the offensive, their lightsabers flashing as he rained blows down on her, trying to drive her into a corner. She kept moving, dancing, flowing, leading him in the direction of her choice. When he finally lunged back to safety, they were both flushed and breathing hard with the exertion.

Atton let out a low whistle. “You don’t hold back, do you? I only saw Meetra fight Sion once on Korriban, and that wasn’t in the same parsec as this ‘sparring’ session.”

Meetra glanced at Atton, her face unreadable. “Sion was not truly trying to kill me. His real desire was to hurt Kreia, and he was…tired of it all. He wanted an end.” She snapped her gaze to Revan, suddenly back to banter in a change of mood abrupt enough to give a man whiplash. “Please Revan, the walls.”

He couldn’t help smiling at that. “It’s good practice for you, Mee. Sith aren’t generally too worried about the state of the paintwork.”

“True enough.” She conceded conversational defeat with a laugh then extinguished her lightsabers. “You’re up, Atton.”

Revan holstered his own lightsabers as well, but didn’t unsheathe his dagger. It was within easy reach on his belt, although he wasn’t quite sure where the pilot carried his. Probably under his jacket. Atton was close to him in height, perhaps a little heavier in build—again, hard to tell exactly under the bulky jacket, which was thick enough that it probably had some sort of ballistic weave. At a guess, he was close to a decade younger than Revan, which gave him the advantage of age. Force or not, Revan had accumulated quite the collection of old wounds, which ached more with the passage of time. Atton took up his position with a casual saunter although Revan could feel the tension radiating off him.

“Ready?” Revan asked.

“Yeah.” The other man’s hazel eyes narrowed, any hint of jocularity gone from his tone.

Revan sensed Meetra stiffen even though she was perched on a plasteel cylinder somewhere behind him. Then he blocked a punch from Atton, which was a feint meant to distract from the follow up with a vibrodagger. He let Atton press the attack, feeling out the rhythm of his movement, a small detached corner of his mind analysing it all at the same time. There was some Republic navy basic training in there, but a good number of his movements and stances were Echani, and the question was where he had acquired such training. The answer was starting to take shape and Revan did not like the trajectory of his thoughts.

When he was certain, Revan caught Atton’s arm in the crook of one elbow and disarmed him, one foot already having swept out Atton’s standing leg and depriving him of the leverage to pull free. He put him in a lock as he took him down. “Not bad,” he said in an even voice as he released Atton. “Not bad at all.”

Meetra offered Atton a hand up and a pat on the shoulder. “It was better than I usually go with Revan.”

Atton straightened his jacket with resignation on his face. “Maybe you’re half as good as they make you out to be”

Revan’s mind was already occupied with outlining the implications of his earlier conclusion. “People say a lot of things about me, most of which have a very distant relationship with the truth. Mee, let’s take a walk. This planet has the messiest shipyard in the galaxy, but you’re right about the hull needing some work. I’ve seen training remotes that look sturdier.”

Meetra rocked on her heels and nodded. “Atton, get some sleep.”

To Revan’s surprise, the pilot didn’t argue, but then again, Meetra’s word passed for law around here even if there were mumbles of complaint. Atton glanced back at Revan. “I’ll want a rematch when I’m not running solely on caf.”

Revan examined the other man, not quite probing his mind, but simply choosing to listen, and he heard nothing but a list of hyperspace routes. “Whenever you’re ready.” He grabbed his jacket on the way to the loading ramp, and Mee did the same. He led the way as they walked together, both scanning the streets out of habit. Revan headed towards an alternate safe house, this one also a sparse room, but located above a swoop racer garage, where sounds more than a foot away were drowned out by the roar of machinery downstairs. He shut the door, checked for any unwelcome ears, then turned to Meetra.

“Do you know that you are travelling with a Sith assassin?”

Chapter 24: Trust Issues

Chapter Text

Meetra sighed. She should have known that Revan would figure it out and could have pre-empted this conversation, but Revan never did operate on the timelines that anyone expected. “Yeah, former Sith assassin. You changed. So did he.”

Revan had the same look that he previously reserved for Republic generals who suggested a frontal assault in a blaze of glory. “Do you really know that? He shields his thoughts well. Too well.”

“I know. He taught me a thing or two about that actually. Don’t poke around in his mind. He hates it.”

“Because he has something to hide,” Revan said, an undertone of thunder in his voice.

“No. But it’s not my story to share. He’s not going to hurt me, Revan.” She sounded as weary as she felt.

“How do you know that?”

“Because he’s taken blades and shots meant for me, then dragged himself upright to do it all again until the battle’s over. And he has never hurt me.”

But you have.

The unspoken words hung between them with the oppressive weight of a gathering storm. Revan turned to stare at the wall. “I see. And is that the only way to earn your trust now? Unblemished loyalty? Absolute devotion?”

“No.” She sank onto a wobbly, cracked plasteel stool. “I don’t want that. He met me when he was adrift. I want him to find his own way, without my influence.”

Revan’s gaze returned to her, studying her for a long moment. “He’s already found it. Just so happens that he wants your way to be his. And what would he be doing without you? Still killing and torturing Jedi?”

“No. He left that life before our paths crossed. You and I have killed far more Jedi than he has.”

“You did it to end the Mandalorian Wars. I did it to prepare the Republic for the threat of the true Sith.”

“And how well did that work out? The Jedi Order nearly annihilated and half the Republic left in rubble. Did the ends justify the means? Did you achieve what you set out to do?” She stood and strode along the perimeter of the room, running a fingertip over cracks in the ferrocrete wall, trying not to clench her unoccupied hand.

“I will achieve my goal, even if my methods and resources have changed. And all this has nothing to do with this ‘Atton’, if that is even his name.” Revan’s eyes had a hard diamond glitter.

She came to a stop in front of him. “You’re right about that much. But the matter still concerns you. You trained those Sith assassins, Revan. And Kreia said that the Mandalorian Wars turned into a series of massacres orchestrated to make Jedi fall.”

“Kae said a lot of things, Mee. She told me that I was the heart of the Force. That a great destiny awaited me. And I don’t know if you remember this, but she was the first one who wanted us separated, back on Coruscant. I wanted to win the war. I wanted the Jedi with us to be ready to fight the greater threat.”

“Victory at any cost. Like Malachor V.” The loudest echo of the war, the sound that always reverberated around the edges of her mind.

“Not any cost,” he answered in a low voice. “There are some prices that cannot be paid.”

“Where is that line for you?”

He made a small, amused sound. “It does exist, even if most of the Republic would be sceptical of that statement.” He lifted his hand, then let it fall to his side again.

“I still don’t know what your true aims are. You want my trust again? Then you need to stop lying to me, even by omission.”

“I’ve told you. I’m here to take down the Sith.”

“Then why won’t you let me share that burden?”

Revan’s pacing took him next to the single narrow window, which threw a bar of light across his face, casting parts of it into deep shadow. “I have my reasons. The most important is that this is not your fight. I held the galaxy by the throat, Meetra, and I killed millions. And that wasn’t destiny, that was a choice that I made, a sacrifice to stop a greater evil. It was not just power for its own sake that I sought. I would have reshaped the Republic into something better. But you’re right. The Jedi Civil War accomplished nothing but death and chaos. I amassed an army that was mostly destroyed, then diverted to those new Sith Lords, who used them to kill the surviving Jedi. To try to kill you. I had to destroy the Star Forge, a weapon that I might have used against the Sith. Not many people get the chance to right their wrongs, and fewer still have a task of such scale. But this is my mess to fix. And you have the chance to reshape the Jedi into an Order that truly values wisdom and compassion over blind adherence to dogma.”

“I trust the ones that I left behind. And they will do better without my influence choking them.” And maybe that was why Revan wanted her to leave. Perhaps that was the truth behind Malachor V, even if he didn’t recognise it. It had been a way for him to free himself from her.

Revan raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Do they see it that way?”

“My Force bonding has been amplified to black hole levels these days. I form bonds with every Force sensitive around me. They can’t be objective with me. That’s why I had to leave. I would have left Atton with the others, but he figured out that I was going.”

“I see. And what do you intend to do with him now?”

“Give him the ship, and send him back to the Republic.”

“Ever the optimist, Mee. I don’t think anything short of death will make him leave your side. And that is far too easy to come by out here.” Revan grimaced with remembered pain, and she felt the throb of an old wound in his left leg.

“I can and will help you in this war, but perhaps you are right. We will cover more ground apart. If I leave now, we may be able to break the Force bond between us, so that you won’t have that vulnerability.”

“Oh, Mee.” Revan lifted his hand again, and this time he took hers, running his thumb over her knuckles, gently exploring each rise and dip, lingering over scars both old and new. “You cannot stay, but that is not the reason. It never was.”

She could feel time wheeling on them again, the unspooling of the threads of fate, pulling them in impossible directions. “Would that it could be different.”

He didn’t answer, instead drawing close, his gaze almost scorching in its intensity as it flitted over her eyes, her hands, the line of her shoulder. She had the impression that he was committing every detail to memory. “Will you tell me about them? The other Jedi that you trained?”

“If you’ll tell me about your own time on the Ebon Hawk.” And then they were young and innocent again, with nothing but words to bridge the distance between them, using the frail construct of language to show each other their worlds, two realities blurring into a singular truth for them.

“Fair’s fair.” Revan still had not released her hand, and she curled her fingers around his. “So, you’ve met Carth right? If you think I have trust issues—“

Chapter 25: A Clear Conscience

Chapter Text

Atton had his feet up on the console when Meetra opened the door to the co*ckpit. He removed them with no particular haste and turned to her. “Misplaced the dark lord somewhere? Good riddance.”

“He has a name. A rather well known one, as a matter of fact. I’m meeting Revan at the shipyard at shift change—he’s gone to buy us some rations. I want you to come with us later.”

Atton folded his arms, looking petulant. “What for? Two’s company, three’s a crowd.”

“You don’t have to like him, but you need to learn to work with him.”

“Oh, that’s a relief, here I was thinking that I was going to have to pretend that the arrogant, self-absorbed schutta was halfway tolerable. Really dodged a blaster bolt there.”

Meetra sat in the co-pilot’s seat, letting Atton vent his feelings. It helped to release pressure valves every so often, instead of risking larger explosions. “I thought you two might get along,” she said mildly, unable to wholly refrain from gentle mockery. “You have so much in common after all, what with the whole ex-Sith thing…”

Atton gave her a baleful glare, although these days, those contained annoyance rather than true rage. “Are we really going there now?”

Meetra rested her elbow on the seat’s back and leaned her head on her hand. “Not unless you want to.”

“Where I want to go is back to the Republic that we just saved. I didn’t even get any free drinks out of it.”

“Carth can give you a medal to pin to your jacket if you want one. If you ask nicely.”

“Nah, he wouldn’t. Not unless you ask.” He frowned before he even asked the next question, assuming that he wasn’t going to like the answer. “So, when are we heading back?”

“We just got here. I’m going to hang around, soak in some natural light.”

He glanced at the pall of smog hanging over the city, which had already left a layer of grey dust on the Hawk’s viewing ports, his mouth twisted into a sceptical line. “Look, you’ve offered your ex-boyfriend a friendly helping hand, he’s sure that he has it all under control, now you can go home with a clear conscience. How about it?”

“And you’ve offered me the chance to return, so your conscience is clear too,” she replied gently. “You don’t have to stay.”

“Lady, you need an intervention. Your ex-boyfriend is going to get us all killed pointlessly. So let’s pull up and burn sky.”

“You can take the ship.”

“Giving the ship away again ?” Atton smacked his forehead with theatrical frustration. “If I didn’t see what happened to the last guy, I wouldn’t look a gift ronto in the mouth, but—“ He thumbed the switch for the public commlink channel. “Attention, droids, prepare for boarding, your master has summoned a slaver gang with yet another act of unwarranted generosity.”

Meetra shook her head. “Really? Was that necessary? A simple thank you would have been nice.”

The co*ckpit door slid open, and T3 whirred in with an agitated series of chirps. Atton eyed the droid warily. “Well? What is it? Are we actually being boarded?”

Meetra smothered a laugh with one hand. “No, not quite.” The astromech droid extended his shock arm and scooted towards the pilot, beeping in a high pitch of menace.

“Hey, watch it!” Atton lunged out of his seat, keeping it between himself and the droid. “I told you they break! In the head!”

“It’s fine, T3. Yes, I’ll look at his hostile detection algorithms. No, you don’t need to shock him to hard reset his circuits. I know you’re not broken in the head. Yes, I know you don’t have a head. It’s your central processing unit. Mmhmm. Organics don’t abide by logic most of the time, no.” Meetra put a fond hand on the little droid and he chirped before wheeling around and heading out, satisfied that everything was under control.

Atton looked at the closing door with renewed concern. “Is that trigger happy assassin droid going to go berserk too?”

She coughed a little, embarrassed. “No need to worry. You’re…not on the list of accepted command inputs for HK. I thought it best, given your feelings about droids in general.”

Atton settled himself back in his seat with a grunt. “Can’t really argue with that, I guess.” He produced the pazaak deck from its usual pocket inside his jacket. “Republic Senate rules?”

Meetra didn’t need to read his thoughts to know that she would need to let the idea of the three of them working together simmer for a bit longer. Her own side deck was stowed in a drawer next to the co-pilot’s seat, and she retrieved it, shuffling it loosely. “Sure. But you’re going first.” He immediately complained that she was playing like the droids, and with that, they settled back into an easy banter of card counting.

Chapter 26: Like A Ship On Fire

Chapter Text

It took just a few days to fall into a new routine, one that was comfortable, familiar, and somewhat akin to the early days of the war. This time around though, they were meant to be general, soldier, spy, logistics officer, tech specialist, and so on, all at once. Revan could do it alone. Had done so for years. But instead of focusing solely on his mission, he agreed when Meetra asked if he wanted to see the upgrades that she had made to T3, then debated the pros and cons of various weapon attachments as they swapped them in and out. HK-47 offered disparaging comments about the inefficacy of an astromech droid in that regard as they worked, but it was the greatest peace that Revan had experienced since the Mandalorian Wars. When they went out on patrol together, gathering data on movements in and out of the shipyard offices, she shared anecdotes like the pacifist package that she had briefly installed in HK-47, and laughingly suggested that as a solution to their current dilemmas, although meatbags were far less modular in that regard.

The pilot lurked in the background, eventually caving to sharing a dorm with Revan when Meetra asked if he would prefer that Revan shared her dorm instead. Meetra continued to play a few rounds of pazaak with him on a daily basis, and there was usually laughter from the co*ckpit whenever they were sequestered in there, but he was otherwise sullen.

Early one morning, while Meetra was still asleep after a restless night with flashbacks to the fires on Eres III, the pilot clattered out the dorm at the usual time, indifferent to Revan sitting in meditation on his bunk. It was as good a time as any. Revan followed Atton to the corner of the main hold that passed as the ship’s kitchen, where he was making a pot of caf.

Without turning to look at Revan, Atton said as he continued pouring hot water over the caf grounds, “The blue milk’s for Meetra, so don’t touch that. I paid a ransom for it.”

“She’s still asleep.” Revan moved the small flask of milk back into the refrigerator.

The other man’s hands stilled for a moment. “Oh, really? And how do you know that?”

Ever since the droid workshop on Coruscant, Revan had always known her state of mind at any given moment, but proximity had simply added more information to their datalink, if one could call it that. In the early days of the war, when the Jedi had been stuffed into any corner of Republic warships that would fit—before the dormitories were emptied out by death and injury—Meetra’s sleeping bag had never been more than an arm’s length away, and when she slept, the rhythm of her breathing was like an ocean tide at the edge of his hearing, her mind quiet where it touched his own. After eleven years of separation, their reunion finally started to heal the wound of her absence. In a sense. Meetra was wounded herself, and if she was the black hole that she thought she was, then he’d crossed that particular event horizon years before. He couldn’t escape it. He had never wanted to.

It seemed too complicated to explain, so instead he shrugged. “Long story. Force stuff. So how I am allowed to have my caf if Meetra gets to hog all the blue milk?”

“For everyone else on this ship, black and bitter as a Sith’s heart.” Atton poured himself a cup and leaned back against the bench with an insincere grin. “What do you want?”

“Merely to talk. You’re an interesting one.”

“You’re not my type,” was the sardonic reply.

“Is that so? I am certain that I’m not the only one on this ship well acquainted with the Sith. You’re good at hiding what you were—but I trained the first of your kind.” Revan knew that the caf had no more than a placebo effect on a Jedi’s physiology, but he helped himself to a cup anyway.

“And you know what we did to break the Jedi.” Atton’s voice was filled with self-loathing. “What you taught us.”

“Yes.” Revan could tell that Atton had been good at it: breaking Jedi in body, mind and soul. It wasn’t just the fact that he had survived his time as an assassin; there was the way he fought, feinting, flowing effortlessly between styles. The mental shields that most Jedi would have struggled to penetrate. “And yet, here you are, now a Jedi, and one who survived a fight with a Sith Lord who was close to immortal.”

Atton laughed mirthlessly. “Anyone can survive a fight if they know when to run.”

“But you’re not running anymore,” Revan observed quietly. “You would die for her.” It was a statement, not a question.

Atton’s expression was guarded. “What’s it to you?”

“See her safely back to the Republic. But between now and then, if it ever comes down to choosing between Meetra’s life or mine, I know that you’ll choose her. And if the tables are turned and the choice is between you or Meetra, you know that I’ll do the same. As long as we’re clear on that.”

“As crystal.” The other man’s eyes unfocused for a moment, one hand finding an inside pocket of his jacket, its contents a mystery. “You didn’t need to tell me that.”

“Then I probably don’t need to tell you that Meetra doesn’t need to know that we had this little talk.”

Atton snorted. “What do you take me for, an idiot? Actually, don’t answer that. I have enough trouble trying to pretend that an arrogant schutta hasn’t waltzed onto my ship to act out some cloying holovid of a Jedi love story.”

Revan actually chuckled. “Mee mentioned your taste in holovids actually—that wasn’t quite the impression that she has of your preferences.” He looked towards the port dormitory, feeling Meetra rouse, but then she rolled over and sleep overtook her again.

“Yeah, it’s all fun and games and jokes now, isn’t it.” Atton’s voice was flat with anger, even though his mental chatter was a screen of engine sequencers. “You didn’t see how she was after ten years of exile.” Revan caught a fleeting but vivid image of Meetra clad in some sort of oversized high-vis uniform, curled up in the copilot’s chair. A flash of tenderness accompanied the memory before Atton slammed his mind shut again.

“No. I didn’t.” All Revan had seen was the immediate aftermath of Malachor V: Meetra blinded, deafened and maimed as a result of his selfish love. She had found a way to circumvent the wounds of war, and had done so without him. “She said that all of you helped her heal.” All those lives touched by the wars they had waged, coming full circle in her presence. Coincidence had heaped upon coincidence until the inevitable declaration that it was the will of the Force.

“She’s got that backwards,” Atton muttered, his shoulders sagging for a moment before he continued, bitterness in his voice. “And she’s come all the way out here…the old witch got what she wanted in the end. Your old master. She kept talking about you to Meetra. Justifying your actions, convincing her that it was all some five dimensional game of dejarik. Know what I think? I think you’re just a manipulative bastard, who saw Meetra as just a piece on the dejarik board—like how you look at everyone else—and chose to sacrifice her to Malachor V.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, as irrelevant and incorrect as it is. Our goals align: for Meetra to be safe, and for her to return to the Republic. We can suffer each other’s presence for that purpose.”

Atton scoffed. “That’s it? Not going to invade my mind? Threaten to kill me if I slip up?”

What Revan wanted to know was if Atton had ever imagined his hands around Meetra’s throat, or taking a knife to her skin, or any of the other hundred ways that he knew how to make someone suffer. Revan didn’t doubt that ten years ago, he would have split Atton’s mind open to find the truth. “No. Meetra trusts you.” And that meant something to Revan. Of course, if Atton did hurt Meetra in any way, he wouldn’t get the chance to do it again. But that went without saying.

“Nice to see you two getting along so well.” Meetra appeared like a ghost in the doorway, albeit one that was rubbing the sleep from her eyes and was still bundled up against the cold in two layers of Jedi robes. It was impossible to know for certain how long she had been listening—as promised, she could conceal her presence from even him, given sufficient distraction. If he could learn this from her, then he would, and then he would ask no more of her.

“Like a ship on fire,” Atton replied with a generous serve of sarcasm that even an Ithorian would have noticed. Without being asked, he made a cup of caf for Meetra and handed it to her, the drink turning into an unappealing shade of muddy teal when the blue milk was added. Her simple thanks was enough to scour away some of the pilot’s anger.

“Should I be worried that you poke around in the Ebon Hawk’s engine?” Meetra took up a position leaning against the counter between them, blowing on the hot caf before she sipped it.

“Only when I get too bored and need some entertainment,” Atton answered in a deadpan.

“If you deigned to leave the co*ckpit, you’d find plenty of entertainment out there. This place reminds me of Nar Shaddaa. The air tastes of desperation.”

“I think we still have that dancer’s outfit somewhere…” Atton said in a suggestive tone and Meetra flushed, the look on her face promising a disturbance in the Force for everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Revan shook his head. “At least wait until I leave the room. This conversation is not meant for my ears—excuse me.”

“Wait. We’re meant to be checking out that warehouse together.” Meetra’s glare at Atton could have melted through a ship’s hull, but she placed her emptied cup carefully in the sink. “Get your gear, Rand. You’re coming too.”

Chapter 27: A Question To Be Answered

Chapter Text

Revan’s skill in stealth was passable, but Meetra had spent her years in exile blending in while Atton had spent the Jedi Civil War utilising the element of surprise. She asked Atton to stay high along the catwalks, and he gave her an order to be careful and a curt nod before he activated his stealth generator. Meetra didn’t need a stealth generator, and she let Revan’s mind feel the sensation of becoming the background, using the Force itself to conceal her, but keeping her connections to Revan and Atton clear, imagining information sparking along wired datalinks. Revan activated his own stealth generator, and as in the past, they didn’t need to see each other to know what the other was seeing or doing.

The current hypothesis was that slavers were operating out of this warehouse, but they hadn’t risked coming close enough to confirm it until now. There was a private landing pad attached, and a heavy guard that they had avoided at shift change. They entered from a ventilation port near the roof, the air already heavy with the stench of refuse and mould.

The first cargo crates contained spice, others contraband sedatives. If they stopped to interrupt every spice smuggling operation, they would die of old age before achieving their primary objectives, so they moved on, following the smell. The ground level of the warehouse contained both guards and more legitimate cargo, in the form of rations and some weapons of corporate manufacture, as well as a barred staircase to the basem*nt within the central office, which was sliced easily enough. Atton kept a vantage point with a bead on the office, while Meetra and Revan pushed ahead.

Meetra could taste the fear and suffering at the back of her throat, feel its vice around her head. Life chipped away to the last rattling breath, carved right down to the bone. Revan felt the backwash of it, and he moved a little closer, even if he was unable to touch her without making his stealth field fail. She wasn’t sure which one of them sensed the Force users first, but did it really matter?

The staircase opened into one end of a dank cell block. Shapes huddled at the back of the cells in the gloom, the lighting restricted to the halls only. There were a few patrolling guards, bored and uninterested in the job, but smart enough to know that where the Sith were present, one had best look industrious.

The two Sith wore black robes—while boring and conformist, the attire did have the benefit of declaring their status. They were arguing in low voices while the guards pretended not to eavesdrop. Meetra sized them up. A human male, heavyset, with a breastplate and a double-blade. A Twi’lek female, single blade. There was something under Meetra’s foot. A ripped set of child underpants, blood stains partially obscuring the cheerful gizka print.

No emotion.

At that?

She had always been a terrible Jedi.

But without emotion, she would be worse than a droid. And this emotion could be turned into the strength to change the galaxy. The Force was tugging at her, pressure curling behind her eyes, and she knew what she had to do. Both Revan and Atton were not going be happy.

Meetra let her camouflage fall and the heads of both Sith turned in her direction simultaneously, red blades igniting with angry hums. She took her main lightsaber hilt in hand, her thumb resting on the switch as she looked at the cells. Four variants of blaster rifles, a stun gun and a stun baton were pointed at her. They didn’t attack yet. A single Jedi, so deep in Sith Empire territory, was a question that they would want answered, and that would buy her a few seconds.

“A fool has come,” the male Sith observed. “To preach at us, perhaps.” Revan was circling behind them, his presence still unnoticed for the moment.

Meetra ignored him, her attention on the Twi’lek, and Meetra sensed a small flutter of fear and uncertainty. “Is this the world that you would build?”

“Ah, how predictable. Save your breath, Jedi. I’m surprised to find you all the way out here, but let’s see how your skill with a lightsaber holds up to a Sith of the Empire. You’ll have the honour of being my first Jedi kill.”

The Sith shifted his weight, ready to attack, but pivoted instead to parry Revan’s blow, turning a lethal strike into one that scored through his breastplate and left him with just a burn instead. Meetra’s own blade deflected blaster bolts into the floor, lest a stray one hit some of the sentients cowering in the cells. The Twi’lek remained rooted to the ground, eyes wide. Meetra’s question was asked again in ragged words between jumps and blows, as she took two guards down. “Is this—the world that…you would build?”

The Twi’lek answered by driving her blade into the security console of the nearest cell door. This was both very brave and very stupid, because while the guards had been too distracted to sound the general alarm due to what turned out to be the first sighting of a Jedi in the sector, the security system had been hardwired to do so automatically in the event of any console destruction. The Sith obviously had the same sort of blind spots that most Jedi did where it came to the actual nuts and bolts that built modern civilisation.

Somewhere upstairs, Atton was cursing a blue streak and on the move. Revan deflected a gas grenade back towards the person who had thrown it. The Sith man berated the choking guards for putting his skin on the line as more appeared from the stairs, and screamed at the Twi’lek about her betrayal. “You never stopped being a slave, and you will die like one. Worthless!”

Revan remained a pragmatist. Never waste breath while in a fight. Especially not when he and Meetra could dance together even if they were blindfolded and gagged. He cut off the stream of invective with a silver blade, his face set and grim, taking no pleasure in the kill. The Twi’lek was fighting off guards, her grand plans of helping the slaves escape foiled for the moment by the heavy resistance. She wouldn’t have survived without Meetra, who was older and a far more practiced killer. The former exile raised a hand in a command to halt when she saw Atton shoot the last standing guard in the back.

The pilot’s blaster whipped towards the Twi’lek, but he lowered it when Meetra shook her head, his expression resigned. “Another stray? Hope this one likes the beige and brown dress code.”

Revan was standing behind Meetra and scanning her for injuries. It was an old routine, one that he had after every fight, and they had fallen back into the rhythms of the past. When he was satisfied, he watched the Twi’lek, wary of any further indecision with allegiances. If Revan was the heart of the Force, then the Force was a cynical thing indeed.

“What’s your name?” Meetra asked.

“Qan,” she answered in a tremulous voice. “No…no, wait. My name is Lisaam. My real name.” Ridges of old scars wrapped around her wrists and trailed under her sleeves, her past written on her skin.

“And what will you do now?”

“I don’t know. I…” She trailed off, looking lost, not yet used to having a choice of her own.

“Can you get these people somewhere safe?” Meetra asked.

“Maybe.” Lisaam looked at the prisoners. “Anyone who can hold a weapon, take one. We’ll have to fight our way out.”

Atton recognised Meetra’s expression and he puffed up like an angry gizka. “Oh, no no no. We are not doing that.” To Meetra’s surprise, he caught Revan’s gaze in an attempt to enlist him. “Tell her that we’re not going to commit mass suicide.”

Revan’s response was nonchalant. “We aren’t. Lisaam—we need to find your superiors, if we want to end this for good. Then you need to find somewhere to lay low.”

The Twi’lek produced a security card from a pocket, and Revan caught it easily. “The temple is outside the city; you’ll need speeders to get there.”

“Coordinates?”

“About seven klicks directly north from the shipyard’s northwest gate. Sticks out like a sore thumb, big black tower.” It seemed the Sith were monolithic in their architectural tastes, as expected.

Revan put a hand on Meetra’s shoulder. “I assume you want us to be the distraction?”

“Yes.” Meetra turned to Atton. “You don’t have to do this with us.”

A muscle in Atton’s jaw twitched. “Serves me right for keeping bad company.” He cast a quick eye over the fallen guards, found another three gas grenades, then checked his blaster pistol. “Let’s get this over with.”

And they did. Perhaps some of those guards didn’t know that they were slavers. Most of them would have families waiting for them to come home. Some of those people would starve without their wages. It was a cycle of suffering and violence that they were still trying to break after all these years. After all, she, Revan and Atton were all creatures born of war, striving to be more than the sum of their wounds, trying to leave less pain in the wake of their passing than that which they caused. A net reduction in suffering, even as the universe slowly unravelled into entropy. It was all that anyone could hope to achieve.

Chapter 28: A Chance to Choose

Chapter Text

As they stowed their gear back at the ship, Revan said to Meetra, “Risky play with the Sith back there.” He said it as if he was commenting on the weather, but he immediately received a look that indicated Meetra knew which way this conversation was about to go, and warned him of her intention to come out swinging.

“I’m surprised that Meetra didn’t immediately offer her a berth on the ship.” Atton’s frown deepened. “Just to be clear, Surik, I’m not saying that you should.”

Meetra threw her jacket on a hook then inspected her shirt for bloodstains. “Lisaam is needed elsewhere. This is a war of ideas. She needed to be given the choice. Shown that there is another way.”

Revan valued efficiency. Hours spent working on droids made him appreciate elegance of design, the performance of a function without fuss and with minimal resource utilisation. The Sith were a splintered group, and he was destroying one cell at a time, getting closer to the heart of the Empire with every move. But it was a slow process, and he needed to see this done before his age and his wounds caught up with him. Most of the time, the problem before him was one that was most quickly solved with lightsabers. A single mistake could mean death, and more importantly, would mean that the Republic would fall in the next decade.

He had never been in the habit of being less than crystal clear about his opinion when life and limb was at stake, and even a mind wipe had not deleted that trait. “We may not have the luxury of giving them that choice. If the Sith find us, we stand no chance against a concerted attack. And allegiances that prove flexible often bend both ways.”

Meetra had unclasped and hung her utility belt, staring at it blankly for a long moment before she turned back to Revan, the cold glitter of the night sky in her dark eyes. “Do you think that I don’t know that? You can show them. Offer them a hand. But they have to choose.”

The tension in her voice silenced both Revan and Atton. She stared them down in turn then exhaled a ragged breath. Her voice was very quiet when she finally spoke again. “Not long after the Jedi Council exiled me—I had just landed on a new planet, when I saw a man beating a woman to the brink of death on the street. No one did a thing. Not one person. They just turned their heads and kept walking. I went up to him. Caught his arm, told him to stop. He then started on me instead. I didn’t know how to fight without the Force. It was like moving underwater: every image distorted, every sound muffled, my limbs leaden. It ended about as well as you might expect. No permanent damage, just some broken ribs and a hundred bruises. I could still defend myself to a point, and I managed to land enough hits that he finally limped off.”

“I checked on the woman, and she could barely talk through a mouth full of blood and broken teeth. Couldn’t open her eyes because her face was so swollen. She was begging me not to hurt him. Told me that she deserved it, and that it was her fault. And that he was going to take care of her and their baby now that he was home from the war. I couldn’t convince her to leave him or to come with me. In the end, she crawled back up the front steps of their house. I don’t know if she survived—I left that planet the next day.”

“I stopped trying after that. I stopped believing that people could change. That I could change. It wasn’t long after that when I heard that Darth Revan was dead. It was then that I forgot what hope felt like.”

“Mee—“ Revan breathed. Meetra had every death from the war branded on her soul, but the grim aftermath had left its wounds as well. Had they been alone, he would have taken her hand, tried to reassure her—and himself—that she was safe, protected. He should have looked for her after the Jedi Civil War. Searched every habitable planet in the galaxy until he found her. But even as the thought crossed his mind, he knew that if he had chosen that, the Sith Empire would be amassing their fleet for the invasion rather than looking inwards and chasing the ghost killing their Force-users.

Meetra felt his turmoil. The look that she gave him held no blame. “Then there were rumours that you were alive and that you had saved the Republic. And I thought that maybe it was some ridiculous Republic propaganda to start with, but the reports kept coming. You chose the light again—“ Revan felt the memory that the galaxy was finally spinning again as it should, “—but you didn’t do it alone.”

She turned to Atton, who as always, looked at Meetra as if she was the solitary star in the sky. “Neither did you.” A flicker of understanding passed between the two, a secret that Revan was not privy to. “They need to be shown that there is a choice. They deserve a chance to choose.”

As much as Revan didn’t want to admit it, he now understood why he could not win this war without her. He nodded slowly. “I understand.”

Atton’s hands twitched into fists, and Revan knew that he was imagining how he might inflict a commensurate amount of pain on the man in the story. It was clear that all this was as new to him as it was to Revan. What else had happened to Meetra in those lost years? The pilot got a shaky grip on himself before he spoke—he still sounded like a comedian about to receive a rotten vormfruit to the face. “Hey, you wanna invite more people here to decrease the relative proportion of Jedi or droids on my—I mean, our ship, be my guest.”

Meetra cracked a wan smile. “Maybe we should get you a tattoo reminding you that you are a Jedi now, like it or not. But for now, we need to talk about our plan for the temple.”

Chapter 29: The Kinrath Nest

Chapter Text

Now that they had kicked the kinrath nest, they ultimately decided to strike fast. What passed for the local law would be looking for them, and not with the intention of giving them a pat on the back for a job well done. Speeders were purchased and checked by all three of them; no one was convinced of the integrity of used speeder sales staff. The ship had already been refueled and resupplied. Once they were off planet, Revan could choose a different spaceport for a dropoff, where he could avoid the devoted attentions of Sith enforcers.

A few hours later, under the cover of night, they pulled up on a small ridge east of the temple. There was a sharp breeze, barely broken by the scrubby vegetation but it helped thin out the smog from the city. Atton pulled off his helmet and sucked in a deep breath. “Damned Jedi adrenaline junkies,” he muttered.

“You didn’t crash after riding seven klicks in the dark. Trust in the Force.” Meetra said. “It shows you what your eyes cannot.”

Atton’s expression was hidden by shadow, but his feelings were clear enough from his tone of voice. “Is that from that old witch?”

“No, just every Jedi Master that I’ve ever met. And Visas for the actual practical application of such advice.” Meetra switched off her speeder engine and slung her pack over her shoulders. “We’ll practice this again during the next hyperspace jump.”

Revan had already dismounted and was checking his weapons. “Focus. We proceed on foot from here.”

They marched in single file, Meetra leading and Revan bringing up the rear. The temple was visible as a patch of starless sky. There was an unsettling absence of life around it, much like Korriban and Malachor V. But even the Sith had mundane needs, like food, fresh clothing, maintenance supplies, and such things would hardly be delivered through the main entrance, lest it shatter the illusion of grandeur. So there was a service entrance, where Atton sliced the lock without difficulty when Lisaam’s security card failed to open it. They walked right in and even Atton’s muttered complaints fell silent. The fatigue of the previous mission faded with the adrenaline of impending battle, all too familiar to every one of them.

The Sith generally organised into a pyramidal hierarchy when left to their own devices. Revan’s hypothesis was that the number of Sith here would be in the range of an average Jedi enclave, which meant that they were probably outnumbered by a factor of ten to fifteen. None of them liked those odds. But the Sith were also prone to descending into internal conflict when the spot atop the pyramid suddenly became vacant. If it came to it, what they really needed was the hyperspace coordinates of the Sith Emperor’s capital, or a lead to another cell of greater influence and proximity to the throne. Undermining the Sith here was strictly speaking of secondary importance, but one that was still worth some degree of risk and resource investment.

The temple interior held no surprises. It was all hard surfaces, echoing corridors, featureless rooms with just about everything painted black. On the other hand, less distractions for when they meditated, and no one would be excusing themselves to go to the bathroom every five minutes, unlike in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. Revan sent Meetra the thought and felt her stifle a laugh, even though she’d faded into the background and was invisible to both regular and inorganic sight.

He took point because he had the most experience with this flavour of Sith, and his instincts were leading him up darkened stairwells, to the tower’s summit. It was going to be absolute hell trying to pull off an escape if things went south, but the Sith commander was there. The Force worked both ways after all, and maybe it was just throwing them together like toy soldiers, to see which of them emerged intact from the melee to be declared the victor. He didn’t think that they had the element of surprise as they had hoped; rather, it felt like the path had been cleared for their imminent encounter. Meetra shared the feeling, and relayed that Atton did as well, without needing anything as clumsy as words.

A trap then, with but one way to spring it. There were more mundane methods to get what they needed. If he had still been flying solo, he would have walked away, tried again in a different system, a speed bump in his war for the sake of survival. Perhaps love was clouding his judgment, for he kept ascending the tower. Perhaps it was Meetra’s influence. They could not walk away without dooming the runaway slaves and Lisaam. And in the aftermath of that, this world would continue to chafe under the yoke of the Sith until someone dared to to stand up to say no again.

The Sith were arrayed on the temple summit, wind whipping their robes at that altitude. Revan had expected more than the twenty present. A second ambush team seemed a likely explanation for the discrepancy in numbers. This world’s commander was a petite woman, single hilt wielder.

“Ah, Jedi. Come now, don’t be shy. Some of these novices have never seen one of your kind. A true Jedi, that is. Oh, we do have some misguided children, who seek to cast off our truth and chant your meaningless creed. They can’t even get it right half the time. They just guess their way around your scraps. But to see one who believes so deeply in something so wrong—behold the face of folly, my children.”

Revan deactivated his stealth generator, feeling Meetra immediately warn Atton against doing the same. Maybe they knew, maybe not, but no sense throwing down all your cards and revealing your hand. Were those words his, or Atton’s? Didn’t matter. Focus. He swept his gaze over the Sith as they ignited their lightsabers. The commander was the primary threat here. She was strong, a knot of polished hatred at her core. She wasn’t interested in salvation or a second chance. She wanted the prestige of the kill. But for the others: doubt had always been a potent tool. And they deserved at the very least, the offer of a second chance. He spoke in a clear, steady voice. “They know that there is another way. That life can be lived without cruelty. That there is no truth in the Sith code; it is only another way to bind people within their own chains.”

The commander laughed with maniacal delight. “Oh, the Jedi flaps his lips, thinking all the while that we haven’t noticed his friend. Come say hello, show your handsome face. You’ve grown impatient with your leader, haven’t you? The endless platitudes, the hand wringing—no wonder you harbour such resentment.”

Atton made a snap decision and opened with multiple shots from his disruptor pistol, his stealth field failing with a crackle. He brought a pistol to a lightsaber fight, which would have been a lot worse if Revan had not been there to fend off the Sith closest to him, but the scoundrel hit the commander in the leg.

The commander threw her lightsaber at Atton before he could draw his own, the weapon pinwheeling through the air faster than an untrained eye could follow. It would have struck true if Meetra had not parried it, sending the lightsaber sailing over the edge of the tower.

“Most sly of you, pretty little Jedi, I didn’t even know you were there. Quite clever to be able conceal yourself so well, when you feel like an empty chamber, containing the echoing screams of a million people being crushed to death by inches. Strange but exquisite.” The commander held out an outreached hand, claiming the lightsaber of her nearest subordinate without even a glance, her attention wholly focused on Meetra. Her voice hardened. “Capture the woman. Kill the other two.”

The Sith’s numbers gave them no particular advantage in the ugly melee that ensued. Instead, they got in one another’s way from a lack of experience of fighting in groups, occasionally hacking off each other’s limbs before Revan got around to doing it for them. It seemed that duelling was still the usual form of combat in Sith academies here as well. Meetra was close by, their breaths keeping time even in the fight, and he could sense Atton tuned into Meetra’s flow as well, his own lightsaber tracing golden lines through the darkness. He could almost hear the drone of Atton’s thoughts. Gotta keep her safe. Won’t let them get to her.

Revan fought as well as he ever had, with guile, speed and strength. He had been fighting an endless war on no more than hope and a love that had never wavered even in the wreckage of his broken mind. He had accepted for years that he would never see Meetra again, but now he was fighting beside her, so he fought like a man reborn. He didn’t keep count of how many he killed, taking down the last two before him with a blow from each lightsaber. Atton had his lightsaber to the throat of a grovelling man, who was begging for his life between broken sobs. Meetra had the commander on the other end of hers, the commander’s replacement lightsaber hilt on the ground in two smoking halves. Both Revan and Meetra had never spent much time on the combat application of lightsaber throwing for this very reason.

Atton turned his wrist a little, fully intending to finish the job. The man wailed. “No, stop, please. I don’t want to die. I don’t want any of this, I never wanted any of this. They would have killed me otherwise. I have a name. I’m Aparl. Don’t kill me.”

The commander spat. “I always knew that you were a filthy coward. He’ll be no more use to you than he was to me.”

“Let him go.” Meetra didn’t take her eyes off the commander. “His life is his own, to do with as he sees fit.”

“That would be unwise,” Revan said. He sensed nothing but selfish terror from the man.

Atton’s teeth sawed backwards and forwards, his face a rictus of indecision, then he extinguished his lightsaber. “Get lost. Don’t make us regret this.”

“Thank you,” the man blubbered as he scrambled up, still cowering like a kath hound expecting a kick before he dashed off.

The commander’s shrill laughter carried over the rush of the wind. “Oh, I wish that I could see your face when he returns to backstab you, right in that bleeding heart. Or should I beg for my life too?“ Her voice took on a mocking whine. “My name is Orone! Please release me, noble and merciful Jedi!”

“Enough.” Meetra’s face was calm, and she spoke before Revan could cut in. “Where are your masters?”

“I’ll bring you to them, little Jedi. They’d be very interested in a morsel like you.” The Sith bared her teeth in a simulacrum of a smile. “Even the Emperor himself. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

It was a calculated waste of time. The question was, what for? Reinforcements? Revan’s hand snapped up, the silver light of his lightsaber joining the violet glow of Meetra’s over the Sith’s face. “Leave this to me.”

“Jedi don’t kill their prisoners!” The Sith’s face twisted as she felt the illusion of control slipping from her grasp.

Meetra glanced at Revan, then thumbed the switch of her lightsaber. “Goodbye, Orone.” She turned and walked away, beckoning Atton to follow.

It was true. Jedi didn’t kill their prisoners. Revan was living proof of that. But there was also some souls who never would choose to turn back to the light. These people never waited for death to come in peace. The Sith snarled and fanned her fingers in a familiar gesture, trying to push him away. Revan was already moving to dodge as the Force pooled around her, and he parried the lightsaber flying towards his back. Orone vaulted overhead, claiming a double blade from another one of the fallen before she landed on her feet. Revan didn’t give her the chance to catch her breath, forcing her onto the back foot as she struggled to keep up while using a weapon that was not her own.

The Sith commander tried the same tactic, this time pulling every remaining lightsaber towards his unguarded back, but Revan was faster than she guessed. He parried the four that would have hit him, and in the same spin, his offhand lightsaber met her neck. Once again the air was filled with the stench of burning flesh. Orone sank to her knees, her head dipping forward at an unnatural angle, chin sagging halfway down her chest. Her body was already an empty husk. Light or dark, all became one with the Force.

It could have gone worse, all things considered.

As it turned out, that was a premature assessment of the situation.

Chapter 30: Leaving Hot

Chapter Text

The truth was a concept that most sentients accepted had intrinsic value. And when looked at from a certain skewed point of view, the truth—or information that was close enough to the truth—was also a valuable commodity.

The Sith way would have been to extract answers by torture. The Jedi way was by mind manipulation if asking politely didn’t work. The pragmatist’s way was to simply check the offices, look for visitor logs, unsecured data pads and correspondence. Meetra and Atton were doing exactly that when she felt a chill grip the back of her neck. She threw herself to the ground in a roll, sending a warning to Atton and Revan with the same thought. A dart whistled past overhead, embedding itself in an office notice board, dead centre in an office supply list. Here were the rest of the missing Sith, and it looked like they were the assassin squad.

Atton fired one of the recently appropriated gas grenades in the direction of the dart. He stumbled backwards as a Sith tried to deflect it with a clumsy push, but Atton had spent the last few hours installing a magnetic lock targetter. There was a chorus of coughs as the Sith retaliated with a small hail of darts. Atton had already rolled back into cover behind a desk, but Meetra barked a warning, “Behind you!” She used the Force drag an office partition into position to protect him.

It was Aparl and a handful more Sith, with ornate robes that suggested some degree of status. He shouted, “Capture the woman!”

It got messy after that. These Sith took up flanking positions, firing darts and disruptors at different intervals. Atton was pinned down, and he used his remaining sonic grenade. Only two of the Sith were caught in its radius, and even then they fought on with blood streaming from their ears. Meetra was on the move, forcing them into melee with her lightsabers, drawing on the Force and letting it flow through Atton as well, a gale that carried her from one foe to the next, while remaining wary that a few of the Sith could almost match her for speed. Aparl fired a dart at her, and unexpectedly used the Force to guide it when she tried to deflect it while parrying blows with both lightsabers. It would have flown true if Atton had not pushed it away again, at the cost of ignoring a dart directed at him.

By the time Meetra reached him and yanked it out of his shoulder, the dart had discharged most of its payload. Atton didn’t quite have the full Jedi resistance to toxins yet, and his eyes were starting to glaze as the sedative kicked in. But this was the man who would fight past the point of mortal endurance to protect her, so he was already trying to force his legs to take his weight again although his knees were buckling like a newborn nerf. She wrestled him back into cover, then borrowed some of Atton’s confusion, the haze dulling his senses, then she reached for the Sith there with them and threw the heaviness over their hostile minds, amplified a hundredfold. A few fought off the stun, but Meetra bore down on them before they could recover.

Aparl was the first to fall, this time without any mewling, for he correctly did not expect Meetra to fall for the same act twice. She cut him down, her lightsaber searing through his torso. And here again was the stench of war, burnt flesh and blood, urine and faeces as the corpses emptied themselves. Some of the others started to fight off their fugue and began peppering her with darts as she carved her way through the rest, most putting up a fight with a mix of lightsabers and vibroblades. She kept anyone from getting close to Atton, who was lapsing in and out of consciousness, occasionally firing a shot from his disruptor pistol with surprising accuracy despite his drugged state, managing to wound a few.

The recovering assassins’ aim was erratic at best, and at least one ostensibly aimed at her instead flew towards the stairway entrance, where it was deflected back at its source by Revan. He surged into the thick of the melee with a blast wave that knocked the last survivors off their feet. Meetra had already vaulted out of range in anticipation of his arrival.

“Go!” Revan ordered. “I’ll see to the rest.” Of the two of them, she was the better healer.

Atton was barely breathing when Meetra lifted his head. His eyes drifted open and he struggled to focus on Meetra’s face, then fluttered shut again. She felt his heartbeat slow to a crawl, and with her hand on his chest, pushed life into him, strengthening every inhalation and every contraction of his heart.

It was not long before Revan nullified all remaining threats—he could probably have achieved the mission objectives without them. He had done so for years, and she had nearly gotten Atton killed for no reason at all.

Revan scanned their surroundings with all his senses before he joined them, placing his hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”

“Tranquilliser dart. Chose to protect my back over his own. Enough drugs in it to kill a rancor from the looks of things. The man that I told Atton to release—“ She bit back every bitter thing she wanted to say. There was no time for it. “The ship should be here soon.”

Revan nodded and lifted Atton over his shoulder with a grunt. “Come on. Let’s head to the roof.”

The Ebon Hawk streaked across the sky, slowing to hover above the temple apex. T3 beeped a message of concern as the loading ramp opened. HK-47 had his rifle at the ready. “Greetings, Masters. This unit is disappointed by the lack of remaining hostiles, but it must commend Master Revan’s continued efficiency and artistry when it comes to murder.”

“Get on the turret, HK. Time to test out that new algorithm. T3, meet me in the co*ckpit. Start calculating the hyperspace jump to the next sector. We’re leaving hot.” Revan headed straight for the med bay, where he dropped Atton on the bed. Meetra clapped her hands back on Atton, willing him to keep breathing.

Revan squeezed her shoulder. “You’re staying with him?” When she nodded, he returned the gesture. “Strap in. This could be messy.”

“Don’t let them shoot too many holes in the hull. Atton won’t be happy when he wakes up, although he will feel vindicated.” Her eyes filled with a rush of tears.

“I’ll wear the complaints.” Revan brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with a thumb. “I have to go.”

“Go.” Meetra tore her eyes from Revan’s warm gaze, and held her Padawan’s life in her hands as the ship made a jerky ascent, once again blazing towards the stars.

Chapter 31: The Shifting Path

Chapter Text

“I’m guessing that you want to eat in here?” Revan ducked back out after Meetra’s answering nod, then returned with a bowl of soup in each hand. It was simple fare, but it was a comforting reminder of the plain food of their childhood.

“How’s the patient?” Revan asked. He nudged Meetra to move over, and she made enough space for him to sit on the other stool, their knees bumping. The Ebon Hawk’s med bay wasn’t really made for lingering—even for two people to move around, it was a squeeze. A small freighter like this assumed that there’d be at most one medic on board at any given time, and even that would be a stroke of good fortune.

“Stable, but still out colder than a spice junkie in a Nar Shaddaa back alley.” Meetra’s gaze was fixed on Atton’s face.

“Too bad he missed out on soup, hm? Or we could crack open a bottle of juma and see if that’s enough motivation for him to hop out of bed.”

The furrow between her brows softened. “He keeps discovering new places to hide the juma. I haven’t found the latest one.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Revan already knew the answer, but felt obliged to offer anyway.

Meetra straightened a sloping stack of data pads. “As far as I can tell, no. I can’t purge the toxin from his blood stream. Just have to support his breathing, keep an eye on his heart rate, and wait.”

“I see.” They were both quiet for a time, drinking their soup. Revan took Meetra’s bowl from her when she was finished. She fussed around the pilot, checking the numbers on the machine, tucking the blankets around him. She was still flitting about ineffectually when Revan returned after washing up.

“Go get some rest, Mee. I’ll come get you if he wakes.” Revan could both see and feel her exhaustion. “Granted, he might not want my face to be the first thing that he sees, but he’ll survive the experience.”

Mee attempted a weak smile, but shook her head. “I’ll stay. How’s the hull?”

“T3 wants to work on it for a few days once we drop out of hyperspace. HK’s turret algorithm modifications worked pretty well though—you were right about the ship physics gravitational and altitude adjustments.” Mee made a noncommittal sound in response, and Revan sighed. “You don’t have to blame yourself for what happened.”

Meetra rolled her shoulders back, sat up a little straighter. He’d seen this before. General Surik, squaring up to the weight of command. Time, responsibility, war and exile had shaped her, but none of those things had broken her. All she said was, “I made a bad call. It almost got Atton killed.”

“At worst, he’ll have a cracker of a hangover. You made your decision with the information available to you at the time. That man might have been a potential ally. He was not. And you’ll adjust your decision making algorithm, so to speak.”

“Algorithm, huh? Now that I know who Kreia was, some of the things that she said to me…” Meetra blew out a sigh. “What a waste of effort keeping on a pazaak face when she told me that you would have loved a droid like me.”

“You, a droid?” Revan reached out to muss her hair, and was rewarded with his hand being slapped away with Jedi speed. “Run a diagnostic and report the findings.”

“Behavioural core is at capacity trying to inhibit aggression,” was the irate reply, but Revan much preferred it to the bleak look that preceded it. “Do you think Kreia knew?”

“About us? As I said, she wanted us separated. I got the feeling that she thought you were a distraction from the glorious destiny awaiting me. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’d like to think that we hid our tracks well. And like most Jedi, she was indifferent to all things technological.“

Meetra hummed in acknowledgement, and Revan sensed he was being dismissed. “I need to meditate. Clear my mind.”

“Come and get me when you’re ready to take a break.” Meetra nodded, her eyes again fixed on Atton’s face. Revan looked back as the door hissed shut—Meetra had already folded her legs into a meditation position on the stool, settling in for the long haul. He felt her mind tracing possibilities and weighing probabilities. Once, she’d been a child with a droid’s circuits spread over her lap and the workbench, commandeering the greater portion of their shared space while she worked through the problem. They had approached the Mandalorian Wars the same way, and now it remained to be seen if they could prevent another war with an army of three humans and two droids, where he had been unsuccessful alone thus far.

*

Atton’s oxygen mask fogged with each exhalation, Meetra’s gaze finding a new focus with each time it cleared. The line of his mouth, almost unfamiliar without his customary smirk or scowl. The shadow of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. A scar just above his eyebrow.

As a commander, and subsequently a general, her troops had paid in life and limb for her mistakes. It had been easier in exile, when it was just herself on the line. Then the Force had thrown her back into the fray, and bound her to the others who still felt the reverberations from Malachor V. Kreia had sought her out. Atton had not. This was a long way from Peragus, and he was still here despite her weak attempts to push him away. She wondered if she truly wanted him to leave, and if deep down, he knew that.

Echoes, travelling, rippling. From wounds. Even from things left unsaid.

A part of her had wanted to call it a stupid metaphor, because vacuums didn’t conduct sound waves.

She waited, skimmed datapads of medical textbooks that Mical had recommended with his usual quiet enthusiasm. At some stage she must have nodded off, because one moment, she was reading about Bith ear anatomy, then the next, she was looking into hazel eyes and there was a cramp on the left side of her neck.

“Hey, you.” Her hand found his, and he wrapped his warm, rough fingers around hers.

“Hey.” He pointed at the oxygen mask with his free hand. “Do I really need this? ‘Course, if it makes you feel sorry for me…” He was still slurring the occasional word.

She glanced at the telemetry screen, then pulled the mask off, still keeping one eye on the numbers. “Playing the pity card, Rand? It’s not going to get you out of training tomorrow.”

He grinned, his eyes still vague. “Yeah, well, next round of pazaak is for credits. Gonna clean you out.”

“Big talk, when you’re up against the champion of Nar Shaddaa. Think you can drink some water?” She helped pull him upright. He had to lean against the headboard but obediently emptied the cup that she handed him. “Besides, it’s back to reflex and dodge training for you. You’ve had a couple of weeks off and now a big nap, so you’ll be all rested and ready.”

Atton looked at her for a long moment, then turned his head to stare straight ahead at the med bay door, which was panelled in fascinating uniform durasteel grey like the rest of the ship. “You don’t have the time, so don’t worry about it.”

She’d spent almost every waking hour with Revan since they had found him. She had let Atton down in every possible way: as her crew member, her pilot, her Padawan, her friend. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged, still not meeting her eyes, and the litany of pazaak began as a quiet murmur in her mind. “What for?”

“We’ve been here before, and here we are again. You took a hit for me. And I’m not just the worst Jedi that you’ve ever met, I’m also the worst damn master by a parsec or ten.”

“I’ve had worse benders and hangovers,” he said with affected blithe unconcern. “And your monologues about the Force are short. I haven’t even managed to squeeze in a nap in a single one.” He looked at her through a veil of dark lashes. “Hand over those datapads though, I’ll keep them around for the next lecture. Should do the trick.”

She laughed a little, unable to help herself. “There’s a section on Twi-lek reproductive anatomy and physiology in there. Somehow, I don’t think that you’ll find that particularly relaxing.”

“Really? And the Jedi fanboy was reading that?” Atton clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. “We didn’t even have the excuse of having a Twi-Lek on board.”

“They have equivalent sections on Rodians, Selkath and Gamorreans too. Trandoshan as well, if you’re into that.”

Atton slid back down the bed, his eyes drooping shut again. “Ugh. Not my type.” The pazaak numbers slurred into a drunken jumble, before a drowsy thought escaped him. But you are. He drifted into true sleep rather than a drug-induced sedation.

She tucked him back in, sat with him for a while longer. He looked younger without the masks he wore: the flyboy, the pazaak shark, the fool. She wondered if he had seen her on the fleet broadcasts while he had been in orbit around Malachor V, unaware that he had been bait in a trap. He’d followed her blindly back then too. Here was the paradox: could he—or Revan, for that matter—choose anything but to be bound to her? Their insistence that they wanted this meant little when it came after the fact.

Atton was wrong. It wasn’t Revan who would get them all killed. Chances were that she would be the one to do that.

So. Think. Revan was the champion dejarik player, but he had taught her how to analyse potential permutations of the state of play. The pieces on the dejarik board: T3-M4, HK-47, Atton, Revan, herself. The unknown variables on the other side, as well as the few things that they did know. The shifting path revealed itself in parts.

She had some ideas. Neither Revan nor Atton were going to like them.

Chapter 32: Sweet Dreams

Chapter Text

Revan found it hard to imagine life without the Force. How had Meetra felt in a decade without it? Even during his brief stint as a conscripted smuggler, he had felt the Force sweeping him along, although at the time he had ascribed it to the universe itself being out to get him and a generous serve of downright kriffing sh*t luck, in the words of a scoundrel. He derived a minuscule amount of amusem*nt from imagining the Jedi Council cringing as they replaced his vocabulary with that of a holovid character.

That being said, right now, he probably wouldn’t mind being blinded and deafened for at least the next few minutes.

“Atton,” he said, “Please stop that.”

The pilot had been in high spirits, despite—or because of—Meetra’s renewed dedication to his training during the hyperspace jump. The long hours of lessons and even Revan getting roped in to instructing certain sessions had not been enough to dampen his good cheer, but it seemed that this particular interjection had finally exceeded the limits of his tolerance of Revan’s presence. Atton set down the pistol that he was cleaning. “What? Got a problem with weapon maintenance now?” His voice had its usual note of scorn.

“Stop thinking about what you’d like to do with Meetra in private, both with and without that ridiculous dancer’s outfit.”

The colour rose in Atton’s face, a crimson tideline of shame, but he hunched over his work again with a scowl. “Then stop digging around in other people’s minds.”

“It might surprise you, but I actually have no interest in doing that. Your shield of surface thoughts are like background noise for Meetra and I. It can be…intrusive.”

The pilot was silent for a long moment. “Ah, kriff. It was a surefire way to keep the old witch out, and guess I just never really stopped.”

Revan wasn’t interested in whatever excuses Atton had, and he didn’t particularly care to contemplate the thought of Meetra and Atton sharing any kind of intimacy. But if that was what Meetra wanted—for reasons incomprehensible to Revan himself—then he would respect that. “Talk to Meetra,” he suggested. “Ever since she was a snot-nosed child…“ Revan trailed off, lost in a memory lapping at the edge of his consciousness. Crouching beside a pool in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, using the edge of his sleeve to wipe Meetra’s eyes and nose. What had that been about? Was that after they had been punished for blowing bubbles into the Council chambers? Or when one of the older kids had cracked her rib in training?

Atton glanced over at him. “Did you just fall asleep when you were just about to start your own boring monologue?”

Revan stared at the stitching on the edge of his sleeve, which was starting to unravel. “Be glad that Vrook and Kae never trained you, given your distinct lack of manners. The point is that for most of Meetra’s life, she’s been taught to avoid attachment.”

The pilot seemed to weigh his next question. “What was she like? Before the war?”

She was even more beautiful now, which Revan would have once regarded as an impossibility. War had forged innocent idealism into strength, yet had not dimmed the spark of hope that she carried.

Revan, who had ever been true to his nature, instead replied, “Wore her hair differently.”

“Oh really? I’d never have guessed.” Atton’s voice oozed sarcasm.

“Back then, it was easier to get her to smile and laugh,” Revan finally said after a long pause. As much as he didn’t like it, the fact was that Atton did cause a statistically significant increase in the aforementioned smile and laugh frequency. And Atton’s uncomplicated devotion to Meetra was worthy of respect. “I’ll spell it out for you if I must: if you want anything more than friendship with Meetra, you’ll have to take that first step.”

Atton shoved his blaster back in its holster. “I’m not talking about this.”

“Good.” Revan lowered himself onto the lumpy, somewhat malodorous mattress on his bunk. “As long as you stop thinking about it too.”

“Why hasn’t she said anything about all this to me?” Atton sounded almost plaintive. He produced his lightsaber hilt from inside his jacket, dismantling it in preparation for cleaning the crystal and focusing lens, glaring at the hilt the whole time as if it was the source of all his angst. It was in some sense, the Jedi code being what it was.

Even as the Dark Lord of the Sith, Revan had been remarkably even-tempered. The incident with Malak’s jaw had occurred under substantial provocation and was the exception rather than the rule. Revan was aware that some cultures promoted violence as a form of mate selection competition, and that included some absurd notions of defending a potential mate’s honour. The way he saw it, Meetra was quite capable of negotiating her own interactions with Atton. Maybe Meetra did love this—Revan cut himself off from several uncomplimentary words in various languages—person. Or she was attracted to him, or was curious about the improbable amorous situations that he imagined. The less Revan knew about it, the better. As long as Meetra was happy. He kept repeating that to himself.

Revan rolled over to face the wall. “Don’t know. Ask her tomorrow.”

“Why are you telling me all this anyway?” For someone who had just declared that he didn’t want to talk about it, Atton had far too much to say.

“So that I can go to sleep without being disturbed. Good night.” He closed his eyes, wishing that the pilot would take the hint and shut his hatch, but that was Meetra levels of optimism.

“I mean, I would have thought that you’d want to, uh, reconnect with Meetra. You’ve been spending a lot of time together.” There was a poorly concealed touch of resentment in his voice. “But you and Meetra aren’t…you know. Blowing each other’s fuses. Right? Mira did say something about you and Bastila being an item.” This time, Atton sounded hopeful.

Revan wrapped the thin pillow around his head. “I thought we weren’t discussing this,” he said to the wall. What sort of stupid euphemism was that? And wasn’t Mira a bounty hunter? Mee had mentioned in passing that she was unusually fond of stun batons. How did she know about Bastila? Presumably this stemmed from the usual problem of too many people crammed on a small ship with too much time on their hands.

“You started it,” was the accusatory retort.

“Good night, Atton.”

“Yeah, yeah, sweet dreams or whatever.”

*

This how it ends.

The angry hum of a lightsaber. An arc of red light.

Meetra falling.

By the time he skids to a halt beside her and cradles her to him with shaking hands, her heartbeat is weak and erratic. He reaches for the Force, the stuff of life itself, the spark that made them all greater than the sum of their particles, and he tears at those threads of light, trying use it to stop Meetra from unravelling in his arms. “No. No no. No.” He says it again and again, as if by repetition, by disbelief, by denial, he can stop this from happening.

“Revan.” Meetra locks her eyes on his, tries to tell him something. Instead she draws a ragged breath, releases it. And she is gone.

The night sky goes dark, and the stars will never burn again when she is no longer among them.

She is gone.

He has lost the course of his orbit, when she was always the centre, the gravity that held him on his path, and he is careening out of control.

She is gone.

Her physical form grows light in his arms, until she weighs no more than a sunbeam, and she is one with the Force.

She is gone.

“Revan.” He woke to the sound of Meetra calling his name, her fingers cool on his left cheek. She brushed a tear from the corner of his eye before she withdrew her hand, his skin immediately missing her touch.

Atton was standing behind her, face tense and hand hovering close to his blaster holster, ready for a quick draw. There was a small radius of destruction centred on Revan’s bunk, with various articles of clothing, warped metal drawers, pazaak cards, tools, and a lone toothbrush strewn across the floor. A bad one, then. Revan hadn’t lashed out with the Force like that since the wars, if his warped memory was accurate on this point.

“Someone want to explain to me what the kriff just happened?” Atton nudged a broken hydrospanner with the toe of his boot.

Meetra paused for a moment before she answered. Revan sensed her attempt to soften the blow, her own feelings cocooned and impalpable. Her voice was level as the distant horizon of a still sea. “Revan had a nightmare. Or rather, a vision. Of my death.”

Atton took it about as well as expected. “What?”

Revan sat up in his bunk, voice resigned but mild, as if all that happened was that he had just spilled caf on his data pad. “Well then. Now you know.”

Chapter 33: Big Picture

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“Condescending clarification: Master Revan has prophesied the death of Master Surik.” T3 wheeled himself in a circle, beeping a mournful sequence at HK’s explanation. Strictly speaking, HK had no facial expressions programmed, but the way his photoreceptors swivelled between Revan and Meetra suggested some degree of approval of this outcome. “Addendum: there is limited data about the reliability of such predictions available in public archives.”

T3’s sad warble rose to a note of tentative hope. Atton grimaced and knocked back the shot of juma clenched in his right fist. “So maybe he’s wrong. Or had a bad trip. Right?”

Meetra and Revan exchanged glances. “That wasn’t the first time you had that vision.” Meetra knew this to be true, even as she said it. “Where and when did you first see this?”

A muscle twitched in Revan’s jaw. “Korriban. During the Mandalorian Wars—I can’t be more precise than that. “

“Such places rarely contain truth.” She wondered who she was trying to convince.

“On the contrary, part of their power is the measure of truth contained within.” Revan sounded tired. “You’ve walked in the shadows of Korriban as well. Was there no insight to be gained from what you saw?”

Meetra blew out a sigh. “Point taken. Were you ever going to tell me?”

Revan dropped his gaze and Atton made a derisive sound. “Kriffing never, obviously.” Meetra finally understood the true reason for Revan’s distance towards the end of the Mandalorian Wars.

“Analysis: morale has an illogically large effect on meatbag performance. Informing Master Surik of the likelihood of her demise would have resulted in a significant weakening of the command structure of the Outer Rim fleet and jeopardised the war campaign.”

Revan rested his forehead on interlaced fingers. “HK—switch off your vocabulator until I say otherwise.”

“The droid hit the mark though, didn’t he?” Atton’s nostrils flared before he poured himself another round. There was a faint whirring from HK’s chassis, but any assertions about the droid’s targeting algorithms were silenced for the moment.

“I will not allow it to come to pass.” Revan’s voice was low. He caught and held Meetra’s gaze. “I won’t let you die.”

“Oh? That’s why you sent her to Malachor V?” The last time she had seen this look on Atton’s face, it had ended in an all-out cantina brawl.

“That’s enough.” Meetra said. She expected to be obeyed and she was. “So. I die, fighting the Sith.” Before the other two could protest, she lifted a finger and they both leaned back in their seats, tense postures mirroring each other. “Just to be clear, if my death is needed for us to win, I’m fine with that.”

“No. There is no victory that is worth this cost. This is the line that I cannot cross.” It was clear that Revan had made this decision years ago and lived by this rule, more than he had ever adhered to the codes of the Jedi and the Sith.

“It’s my life to do with as I see fit.” She considered it a fair trade, if it came to that.

“It’s—you’re—“ He broke off, carding his fingers through his hair. “Damn it all, Mee. You deserve better. This is not how it will end.”

Atton tried to drink the fresh shot of juma, but Meetra reached across and plucked the glass from his fingers. “All yours, if you want it,” he muttered. “But I’m with Revan on this one. Don’t make me kidnap you to get you back to the Republic.”

“Hah. You could try.” Granted, Atton probably had some tricks up his sleeve that she had not yet seen, but Meetra knew that she could take him in a straight fight, and he knew it too. “Now, I was planning to talk strategy before we pop out of hyperspace.”

“Make sure that you’re never in the same sector as anyone who uses a red lightsaber?” Atton suggested.

Revan wore a mirthless sort of grin that was all steel and sharp edges. “That’s a start.”

“I am going to fight this war. Either we work together or I will do this alone. Your choice.” Meetra tipped her head, giving them a crooked smile. “We need to decide where this bird is going anyway. We’re going to pop out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere.”

“We didn’t have the luxury of time. Just be glad that we won’t end up in a star or a black hole thanks to T3.” Revan folded his arms, but she had his attention. “So. Let’s hear it.”

Atton leaned over and retrieved his glass, draining it in the same movement. “Now I’m ready.”

“All right. Revan, you left Carth preparing the Republic fleet and Mandalore gathering the clans. Do you ever intend to use these resources, or are they for the Republic to utilise, should we fail?”

“The latter.”

“Are you aware that someone was producing updated models based on HK’s schematics?”

There was a whine from HK as the droid’s processors ramped up. Revan ignored it for the moment. “No, enlighten me.”

“It’s in a military base on the surface of Telos, and was in Czerka’s control. Should be back in Republic hands now. It was being used for HK-50 unit production last year, and they were gunning for me, so the latest line of HK-51s are a big improvement in my book. HK-47 uploaded his own programming as the template. There were some hardware upgrades as well, shielding and so on.” She glanced at the assassin droid, who sounded like a ship engine warming up by this point. “You’d best let HK say his piece before he explodes.”

“HK, enable audio output.” Revan frowned. “And remind me to take a look at your coolant later.”

“Confirmation: reminder in two galactic standard hours.” HK’s photoreceptors flashed. “Statement: only a small number of HK-51 units were produced prior to our departure, some of which were destroyed at Malachor V in the conflict with G0-T0. The status of the factory is not available in public records.”

“It is not worth returning to Republic space for a maybe. The trail will grow cold. We have two likely locations, we should just get on with it.” Revan received a swift kick under the table from Atton, or would have if not for the much vaunted Jedi reflexes.

Atton’s foot connected with the table with a loud thump, but he was a master at keeping on a pazaak face. He ignored Meetra’s raised eyebrow and instead said brightly, “Or you could go and sort it out. See how the Ithorians are going with turning Telos into one big, expensive flower garden.”

“Lisaam needs me.” Meetra could feel the faint tug, that of the nerf herder’s rope if one wished to stick with that tired metaphor. “I think I should have stayed there in the first place.”

“Big picture, Mee. The Sith are going to bring down the iron fist. They have to make an example of them, especially a keystone planet like that. You’d be jumping into a boiling cauldron, and what for? What would you achieve?” Revan was not about to give any ground. He wasn’t accustomed to not getting his way.

“An example, as you said. Prove to other worlds that rebellion is possible.” Meetra shrugged. “The Force is leading me back there, one way or another.”

Atton groaned, the pained sound of a man who had heard the same excuse too many times. “Of all of the cards in the deck, you play that one. How are you even going to get there?”

“I was hoping you’d help with that, actually. We’ve swapped our transponder code and we’re now aboard the trusty ‘Serendipity’.”

Revan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Are you sharing that juma?”

Atton slid the bottle over to Revan after refilling his own glass. “I spent half an hour digging through the pile of new transponder codes for that specific one because you asked, and now you drop it on me as a Force mystical mumbo jumbo joke.” he said sourly. “Next time, we’re naming this ship ‘The Kicking Nerf’.”

“If there’s a blockade, you can get us past it, Atton.”

“‘Can’ and ‘should’ are two different things.” Atton’s foot tapped out an agitated tattoo.

Revan’s face was an implacable mask even without a helmet. “And where do I fit into this plan of yours?”

“You follow the leads. Keep searching for the Sith Emperor’s location. We’ll know if we need each other.”

“Which isn’t very helpful if I’m in a different sector,” Revan pointed out. “Return to that planet and it’s more than likely that you’re going to get sucked into a prolonged war.”

“Or I’ll get to pick and prepare the battlegrounds.”

“Or the Sith will simply obliterate everything from orbit.”

“If they’re willing to sacrifice the infrastructure.”

“If the one tasked with extinguishing the rebellion is anything like Malak was, they won’t even blink.”

Atton watched the debate with a scowl of true misery rather than the usual moderate annoyance. He caught Meetra’s eye. “Are you sure that you need to go back?”

“I am.”

The pilot’s shoulders sagged. “Ah, kriff. But if that’s what you need, then I’ll get you there.” He jerked his thumb at the juma bottle. “Are you going to drink that, or just look at it longingly?”

“Pax would have,” Revan said before he handed the bottle back.

Atton raised a questioning eyebrow. “Friend of yours?”

“Something like that.”

The scoundrel scoffed. “Why is it that when you ask a Jedi a question that should be answered with yes or no, that is never the answer that you get?”

“The question behind the question often illuminates the truth.” Meetra tried to channel Master Vandar, but was struggling to keep a straight face.

“Statement: the Jedi tendency to answer a straightforward question with a sentence that is logically incoherent never fails to decrease the charge in my capacitors.”

The corners of Revan’s mouth twitched, but he had not forgotten the original point of contention. The mask of the general fell away for a moment, leaving weariness in its wake. “I need to think about this.”

“We have time.” If one was being objective, they had a few days before anything could be done.

“Do we?” Revan’s answer was opaque. He looked at Meetra for the space of several breaths before he stood in an abrupt motion. “Come on, HK. Let’s go look at that coolant.”

T3 hummed a sad note when Revan left. Meetra patted his central control cluster. “Don’t worry. He’ll be okay.” Revan had survived eleven years without her—for most of their adult lives. Whatever he felt on the matter, while her death might wound him, it wouldn’t break him. T3 chirped another question, to which she answered, “I’m going to be okay too.”

“Lying to the trash compactor? That’s a new low.” Atton dragged a hand over his face. “For the record, I think going back is a terrible idea.”

“Noted. For the record, I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

“What you should be sorry for is how this Force thing makes it so much more expensive to get drunk. It’s not exactly easy to get good juma out here.” Atton looked at the bottle again and capped it with a sigh. “Best save this for a rainy day. I have a feeling there’ll be more of those to come.”

“Put a bottle away for when we win,” Meetra suggested. She pulled out a credit chip from her pocket and threw it at Atton, who caught it between two fingertips. “My treat.”

“Yeah, I’ll get something.” Hazel eyes held hers. “So you’d better be there, or else I’ll have to finish it all myself.”

“I’ll try to make it.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she left. T3 followed her, and she popped the little droid open afterwards to check the capacitors in his maglocks, just to try to forget the image of Atton waiting, a juma bottle in his hand and an empty chair beside him.

Chapter 34: The Equation of Necessity

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Revan had been unable to justify any alternatives to Meetra’s plan, so they stuck with it. The ship was quiet in the days after that. The few words exchanged were about practicalities, like whose turn it was to wash up or to clean the refresher, or what supplies they needed at the next planet, or who was going to service the oxygen recycling system, or any of the thousand other little tasks needed for ship maintenance. All three humans were experienced spacers and soldiers, and part of surviving hyperspace travel was knowing when contact was altogether too much.

Despite that, Meetra insisted that they meditate together everyday, trying to lend her calm to both Revan and Atton with limited success. Her serene acceptance of his vision just straight up pissed off Revan, even though it didn’t surprise him in the slightest. She could run the hard calculus of war, but when it came to herself, she considered her life to be of no greater value than any other. If she had to choose between herself or a scumbag spice junkie off a dusty Tatooine pavement, or an ex-Sith murderer and torturer like ‘Atton’, or a former Dark Lord of the Sith responsible for bringing the Republic to its knees, Meetra would still gladly sacrifice herself for any of the aforementioned, and anyone else who threw themselves in harm’s way.

She hadn’t changed in that regard. She also still hogged most of the workbench.

Revan threw his sonic screwdriver on the bench. It was their last night together before he would catch a flight to the next planet, and like a true pair of star-crossed lovers—although that was a unilateral situation—they were working on HK’s emergency shields.

She set down her hydrospanner and tipped her head. “Done?”

“We should get some rest before we dock tomorrow.” He replaced HK’s external panels, took the screws that she handed him and the discarded sonic screwdriver. She did the other side as he worked, his fingers moving automatically, which was just as well as his mind could not focus on anything beyond the coming day. Alek had once picked up an infestation of bed bugs from wartime hygiene lapses, and Revan’s current state of mind made a pruritic Alek look serene by comparison. It was questionable if he and Meetra had achieved anything during this listless session of moving parts around.

“Yes. We should.” She dropped a screw. Picked it up. Then she just froze, like a droid with a processor that had run out of memory, before she blinked and looked down at the workbench. “It’s always been more fun with you.” In all the years apart, both of them had never been without a tool in hand for more than a few days, but she was right. It was more fun together. It always had been.

There was heat behind his eyelids. “Mee. Do you ever think about what life would have been like if we had not been born Force sensitive?”

“Sometimes. Especially when I was in exile.” She dropped into a low crouch with her back against the workbench, hugging her knees like a child. “I guess we’d never have met. And we wouldn’t have had a bond.”

He slid to the ground beside her. “Know what? I think we’d have met eventually, in a droid workshop somewhere.”

“So we’re both always droidheads?”

“Can you imagine us otherwise? Even if not, I would search every corner the galaxy until I found you.” He said it as he saw it—a simple objective fact, as undeniable as gravity.

She seemed amused by that, a little saddened by his devotion. He wondered if it was so impossible for her to believe that he loved her beyond the bond. “You wouldn’t even know that I existed.”

“But I would know that something was missing.” He reached out, took her hand. “We’d have a little droid repair shop. Or if wanderlust took you, we’d travel, taking up tech jobs in a hundred different worlds.”

She aligned her hand with his, the small palm and slim fingers belying her strength. “Maybe in another lifetime. Destiny, the Force, whatever you want to call it—“

“f*ck destiny,” he said in a flat voice. “f*ck the Force. I wanted a life with you.”

“Responsibility, then. Duty. The war would have caught up with us eventually.” She closed her eyes, war and its aftermath always an echo in her mind. He squeezed her fingers, calling her back from the past. “If—when we see this through, we can prevent another war. Billions of people won’t have to live through what we have.”

“Yes.” Duty. Responsibility. Atonement. For the greater good. For Meetra. If those goals did not align—if he had to choose. “You’re right that you don’t take orders from me anymore. I can’t stop you from fighting this war. But when a life with you became an impossible dream, I wanted you to have a life of your own. A life without war, the Jedi, or any of this sh*t. I want you to live.”

“A life without you.” She drew his hand close, rested her cheek on it. He felt her heartbeat, always in time with his.

“For that, I have no one to blame but myself. You survived eleven years without me. Endured much that you do not speak of. Forged your own path.”

“We started this together. We will end it together.”

“So we will.” He knew that it would happen, that the universe meant for this, as much as he wished that it was not the case. The Force, a living, sentient thing, the energy that permeated all life, or an expression of life’s desperation to not succumb to death, happy to sacrifice the few for the greater whole. The galaxy was wounded, first by the Mandalorians, then by him, with Meetra at its fractured centre. If he failed to destroy the Sith, all of this would have been for nothing.

But that was a problem for the future. For now, he had Meetra beside him, her presence like the cool glow of Dantooine’s moons. He could sit a little longer, before they needed to prepare for the morrow. Just a few more minutes, before the universe called to them again and they had to forget themselves in the equation of necessity.

Chapter 35: A Routine for Saying Goodbye

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Meetra had not been asked to go with Revan to the spaceport, nor did she volunteer. She just fell into step beside him when he descended the loading ramp.

“Pleading request: Master Revan, do ensure that you return in a timely fashion. While you appear to be at a nadir of your life with an unexpected persistence of all the worst qualities of the Jedi, the processor speed in my motivation core has been throttled at the thought of having to follow Master Surik’s orders instead of yours.”

Revan paused at the bottom of the ramp. “HK, assign primary priority for command inputs to Meetra Surik. And be nice to T3.”

“Statement: primary command input priority has been assigned to Master Surik. Disgruntled observation: this unit’s kill ratios will be decreased by eleven point four percent.”

T3 murmured sadly. Revan smiled at the little droid. “You’ll be fine. We’ll need you to find me again, once I figure out where we need to go.”

Atton let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “Don’t hurry on our behalf. Not like your breakneck pace of the last six years.”

“Goodbye, Atton.” The two men’s eyes met, and Atton was the first to look away after they seemed to come to an unspoken understanding.

“Yeah, well, don’t get killed.” Atton turned on his heel and closed the loading ramp, abruptly ending their silent communion, although he would have bristled to hear it called that.

The next flight to a larger spaceport was in an hour and thirty-seven minutes. Revan bought a ticket, then rounded the spaceport until he found a quiet corner next to some empty vending machines, which fortunately didn’t stink of urine or any other organic excrement. People of every species passed them by while they watched. Many hours had been spent like this in her decade of exile wandering the systems beyond the Outer Rim. Ships came in, disgorging cargo and passengers. Some of the passengers arriving were greeted by placards and polite smiles, others with embraces. Some simply collected their bags and left the spaceport, and she wondered if they had someone waiting or somewhere to go. Back then, she had neither of those things.

Revan leaned on the wall beside her, his gaze returning to her every so often, his heartbeat keeping time with hers. Every boarding call was like the jolt of a live wire for them both. “Thousands of paths converge on this place, then diverge again,” he said, speaking their shared thought aloud.

“People reunited. People saying their farewells.”

“It’s just like the bad old times, isn’t it.” Revan said it as a statement, not a question.

“How many times have we done this?” He told her to go. She told him to go. They were always needed elsewhere.

“Too many.”

“Do you remember the day I left Coruscant?”

“They didn’t let me see you off.” He projected apology, regret, even though they both knew that he had no choice in the matter.

“I cried all the way to Dantooine.” She had been so young, unaware that the universe had far worse pains to inflict.

“I know. You didn’t cry after Malachor.”

“How do you know that?” The Force bond had been severed by then.

“Guess.” The look in his eyes was wistful, and said what he did not. Of course he had known. He didn’t need the Force to know her heart, or that there are some losses so terrible that a numb silence is the only answer, before time wears away at that brittle shell and all the grief spills out, far too late. Yet, if they rewound it all back the beginning then let events unspool again, even with the knowledge of what would unfold: she would still follow him to war, and she would still give the order to activate the mass shadow generator.

Before she could answer, the boarding call for his ship sounded in the harsh accent of a Trandoshan speaking Basic. “Well, that’s me.” Revan pushed himself off the wall and shouldered his pack, then reached out to muss her hair, which had been a surefire way to annoy her in different times. “Promise me that you’ll be careful.”

“Only if you do the same.” She looked at the curve of his shoulder, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze.

“I’m always careful. You should know that by now.” Wary of hostile listeners, he leaned close to whisper in her ear. “May the Force be with you.”

It was her line to say in this routine. She almost spoke the thought aloud, then a hundred ways that they had parted crowded in on her. Coruscant, Dantooine, in orbit around Serocco, Eres III, Dxun, Malachor V—

Malachor, where she killed a planet, and a decade later, killed their master. Malachor, where Revan had made and pledged love to a broken shell of a person. It wasn’t just death that echoed from that place. She’d created more echoes of things left unsaid. It wasn’t just the Force that bound them. It never had been just that.

Yet parting had been so inevitable that they had a routine for saying goodbye.

“Revan.” She caught his hand. “Don’t go.”

“Mee, I have to.” His fingers tightened around hers all the same, with the strength of a man who would never let go of love found anew.

Choice. The will of the Force. The Force had led them to each other again, across the years and among trillions of people. And then, it was up to them. To think that they must part here again, like every other time, because they had no choice—that was not the truth.

Her free hand found the line of his jaw, and his eyes widened with surprise. “Don’t go,” she repeated, voice was thick with the emotion that the Jedi had feared—that she had feared. “We’ll find another way.”

Revan did not—or could not—move a muscle, his mind and his heart pulling him in opposing directions. “Mee—“

Perhaps she was putting her selfish wants before their true goals. Perhaps at the end of this path lay the death that Revan had foretold. Perhaps the chance to find the emperor would pass them by. Perhaps this would be the moment that they lost the war.

Perhaps she just wanted be where she belonged: with him, until the end of all things.

“I choose the life with you. I love you, Revan.” She finally spoke the words that had been left unsaid for far too long.

Revan dipped his head closer, and she tasted salt when she pressed her lips to his cheek. “I know.” He laughed a little. “I’ve been waiting to say that. If this moment ever came.” He kissed away the wry curl at the corner of her mouth, and then said in a quiet voice. “I meant what I said all those years ago. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. As long as you will have me, I will never leave you again.”

She sealed his promise with her mouth, uncertainly running her tongue over the chapped surface of his lower lip. She felt the rush that gave him, and he made a low noise deep in his chest, his other hand coming up to cradle the back of her neck. He parted his lips, then they proceeded to bang their teeth together, both jerking away from each other with an awkward laugh. For two people who could swing four lightsabers between them in a deadly dance, it was a rather dismal display of coordination.

A passing elderly Twi’lek started berating them. “Disgusting humans! Must you perform your mating rituals in public? There are children here!”

Revan replied in flawless Twi’leki, “Mind your own kriffing business,” and accompanied it with a rude gesture that would have made the saltiest Republic serviceman shed a proud tear. The old woman stormed off in an outraged huff.

“Okay, so maybe we’re out of practice,” she conceded.

“Mee, I’d say that we were never were well practiced, if you want to call it that.” He smoothed her hair back from her face.

She leaned forward and buried a laugh in his neck. “You’re a quick study, so am I. We’ll figure it out.”

Revan’s heart rate had been settling, but it redoubled. “We will. This, and everything else.”

Slowly, her consciousness expanded outwards again, past the circle of Revan’s arms. There was something terrible bleeding on the horizon of her mind. It was like the howl of the storm on Dxun, the heat of the fire on Eres III, the darkness blooming from the mass shadow generator. The feeling of wanting to let go and fall into the gravity well. Meetra broke free from Revan, anxious eyes already scanning the sentients around them. “Something’s wrong with Atton—we need to find him now.”

Chapter 36: Flight Path

Chapter Text

Any attempt to raise Atton by comlink was unsuccessful. Logic dictated that they check the ship next, their speed limited to a brisk walk by the crowds who would have undoubtedly noticed a pair of Jedi sprinting past at top speed. Back at the ship, HK’s dry report was: “Statement: the meatbag who pilots the ship left shortly after Masters Revan and Surik did. He returned to the ship for four minutes and seventeen seconds before leaving again twenty-one minutes ago. Query: Would the masters like the meatbag to be retrieved for interrogation? Or to be terminated?”

Revan left some very specific instructions that Atton was not to be terminated, interrogated, maimed or otherwise harmed—to HK’s disappointment—and that they were to be contacted immediately if Atton showed up. They then scoured the spaceport and the town as evening fell, splitting up to cover more ground. Meetra was sure that Atton was in the city but she couldn’t be more specific than that. Revan already sensed that the search was futile. If Atton had been taken by the Sith then the next few days would make plunging into a sarlacc’s gullet look pleasant by comparison, and they could do nothing but wait unless the scoundrel managed to contact Meetra through the bond. If Atton simply didn’t want to be found, he’d be invisible in any one of the thousands of pazaak dens that a city this size would contain. Revan looked anyway, sizing up every human male as he patrolled the grid of streets around the spaceport, loud with restaurants, pazaak dens, cantinas, dance clubs and seedy motels.

It was hours later that Revan found Meetra back at the spaceport, standing by one of the entrances, a continuous stream of sentients passing before her blank gaze.

She shook her head. “The feeling has gone quiet. I don’t know where he is. Did…was he kidnapped? Drugged?”

Revan brushed his thumb over her cheek, marvelling at the feel of her skin before he dragged his attention back to the task at hand. “We should get back to the ship,” he said gently. “Then we can plan our next move.”

After boarding the Ebon Hawk, Revan fired up the nutrient dispenser while Meetra went to meditate, intending to block out any distractions while she searched for Atton with the Force. Instead, she rushed out of the dorm, making a beeline for the co*ckpit. When Revan caught up with her, she was staring at an empty drawer next to the copilot’s seat, knuckles white as she held something over her heart with both hands, as if it was something precious, or a comfort, or both.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“He took it,” she said mostly to herself, before she turned to Revan. “He took my side deck. And he left me this, on my bunk.” She loosened her grip to show Revan a worn deck of pazaak cards in a clear plastoid case, marred by a multitude of nicks and scrapes.

“So he left by intention.” Revan began checking the other storage compartments in the co*ckpit. “Where did he keep his weapons? His other gear?”

“Mostly here. Looks like he took his weapons, maybe a couple of shields and stims. But that feeling from him. Something terrible had happened. It made me think of the war, of loss…”

The metaphorical credit dropped.

“Oh. Oh.” She sank into the copilot’s chair, pressed her face into her hands. “Do you think he…saw us?”

Even if Atton had not seen them—Revan hoped for the pilot’s sake that he had not—it seemed safe to assume that he knew. Meetra had been blazing like a supernova with love and joy, even when they had clumsily acquainted their dentition. Revan chose his words with care. “Maybe. We can’t know for certain one way or another. But I suspect that he knows that there was a change of plan and that I won’t be leaving.”

“Okay, so maybe he doesn’t want to be found. But what if I’m wrong, and he’s been taken by the Sith?”

“I think you’d know if he was.”

“Maybe. That feeling was nothing like when he was badly injured or when he was fighting Sion.” She unfurled herself and looked at the empty pilot’s seat. “He’s been with me since Peragus,” she said in a soft voice. “Helped me get off the station, flew the ship through the asteroid field with the Sith trying to blast us into space dust. Protected me from GenoHaradan assassins on Telos when we were attacked while in prison with no weapons. I was captured on Nar Shaddaa, and he led the extraction team. Destroyed a Sith base on Dxun with the others when I was on Onderon, and resisted the Dark Side in the tomb there. Fought Sion. He’s so much stronger than he knows.”

Atton had been there for Meetra, and Revan had not. He almost sat in the pilot’s seat so he could look her in the eye, but instead he crouched beside her and took her free hand, the other one still clutching Atton’s pazaak deck. “He means a lot to you,” Revan said with no jealousy in his voice. In the maze of choices that had led them to this moment, there were branching paths where Meetra might have chosen Atton instead.

She was examining the pazaak deck from every angle. “I made him promise that he would leave if he decided that he didn’t want a part of this fight. I hope that he’s kept that promise.” A twist of fear crossed her face. “And that he hasn’t done something foolish.”

“Atton is many things—“ Sarcastic, a good shot, not overly fond of showers or shaving, cunning, uncouth, insomniac, borderline alcoholic, regretful, a man who was desperately in love. “—but he is not a fool.”

Meetra said nothing, but her eyes drifted shut and Revan sensed her mind flare like a beacon, offering Atton a flight path back to safety. He lent her his strength, feeling her consciousness brush the millions of souls in the city, their sensations and thoughts a flood that rushed past the unbroken calm of the co*ckpit. Revan listened to the pulse of their lives until Meetra pulled herself back into her own skin.

She looked down at the pazaak deck in her hand. “He isn’t coming back.”

Chapter 37: Statistically Long Odds

Chapter Text

When they lifted off a day later, Meetra didn’t look back once until the countdown to the hyperspace jump. The last jump had been a convoluted route, calculated to account for the need to evade Sith fighters. This time, the direct jump would take them half the time. Meetra tore her headphones off and left the co*ckpit as soon as they were safely in hyperspace. Revan skimmed the Ebon Hawk’s docking protocols, then when he judged that a sufficient amount of time had elapsed, he wandered out to get himself some water and to check on Meetra with being too overt about it. Part of the reason that she had excelled as a commander was the exacting standards to which she held herself. Revan could only imagine what she expected of herself as master—probably that she should meld herself into some absurd, terrifying hybrid of Vandar’s serene wisdom, Kavar’s lightsaber skills, Atris’s book learning, and Kae’s intellect. Falling short of her own stratospheric benchmarks had never sat well with her.

“Indignant exclamation: master, I demand that you put me down at once.”

“Dwoooo.”

“Patience, HK. I’m practicing.”

Revan was greeted by the sight of HK gently rotating through the air, his feet kicking like a petulant toddler. Meetra was seated on the garage floor with her legs folded under her, hands resting on her lap.

“Agitated request: Master Revan, this unit insists that you make Master Surik stop using me as a training weight.”

Revan sat down beside Meetra. “That’s not very nice, you know. I thought you were a fervent believer in droid rights.”

HK drifted towards the floor and was set down with care. His photoreceptors flared with a menacing red light. “Statement: this incident has been recorded in full in my memory banks.”

“I think we can install the kinetic barrier charger without too much of a difference to HK’s weight and speed, if we also invest in upgraded leg pistons.”

Revan raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”

“And I’m going to see if I can fit an additional solid state memory bank for T3. He’s reaching capacity with all the new nav data. We’re going to have to rename the Unknown Regions at this rate.”

“T3, go monitor the hyperdrive. HK, I want an updated weapon inventory before we dock, including any mines and grenades.”

Meetra watched the droids go with a small purse of her lips. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Old habits die hard.”

“I’m trying to figure out what comes next. There was no news whatsoever on the holonet about the fall of that Sith temple, or any sort of upheaval on the planet. Censorship?”

“Not sure how prodding the droids fits in with all this, but there are no independent holo channels around here.”

“So, on a scale of Coruscant to Malachor, how much of a sh*t show is it going to be?” She folded her arms, hunched over her knees. She was looking and moving forward, one dogged step at a time, shaping her regret and pain into a burning determination. This was how she survived the war, then and now.

“Dxun, probably.” The enemy would be dug in and ready for them.

“At least Atton is safe—I know that much. But now instead of following the path of pragmatism, I’ve ruined our plans and dragged you into this.”

He put a tentative hand on her back. “You weren’t as worried about bringing Atton along. I am ever so slightly offended that you think he’s better at surviving than I am.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he pulled her closer until she was flush along his side. “I was worried,” she said quietly. “And now I’ve hurt him, even as I’m glad that he’s free of me. You’re a force of nature, but I’m still scared that I’m going to get you killed.”

“When I have so much to live for?” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “You’ve set the spark to the kindling, but we’ll need to guard the flame, help it spread. And with this, we might yet see the Sith Empire burn.”

“Many will suffer in this war.”

“Many already suffer. Slavery. Poverty. Starvation. Disease. If—when the Sith make war on the Republic, many more will be conscripted, and war will find them in the end. As it found us.”

Meetra nodded, then rolled to her feet. “Spar with me? I need to work off some of this restlessness.”

“Melee and hand to hand. Once we’re planetside, no lightsabers unless we want to announce ourselves.”

Two hours later, all five of their vibrodaggers were embedded in various spots in the wall, bar one that had punctured a storage crate. Meetra had Revan’s arm in a lock, but he used the wall as leverage to kick off and wrench his arm free, using his greater physical strength. In the same movement, he reversed the lock and pinned her to the ground, clamping her legs between his.

She tapped out, breaths coming short and sharp. “Haven’t seen that one before. Brianna assured me that hold was unbreakable.”

Revan relaxed his grip and wiped his brow on his sleeve before he dropped to the floor beside her, just as winded as she was. “Difficult but doable. Would have been harder without the wall nearby, and still hurt like hell to do it.”

“Sorry.” She reached up with both arms in a stretch followed by a sigh. Without the laser focus of the fight, Revan allowed himself to be distracted by the lines of her body.

“No apologies needed. I’d like to think that I gave as good as I got.” He examined his bruised knees and forearms; Meetra was similarly mottled green and purple from countering his blows. Meetra ran her fingers over his forearm, leaving a rush of coolness in her wake. The bruises faded in a matter of seconds. “Heal yourself first,” he ordered as he pulled away from her.

She opened her mouth to protest, then a shadow crossed her face and she whispered, “Oh no.” Her gaze was fixed on her left forearm—now the perfect match of his, with nary a sign of injury.

“You’ve seen this before?” When they had fought together during the Mandalorian Wars, this had never happened. Revan’s memory of Jedi texts were admittedly hazy, but he didn’t recall any mention of such phenomena either.

“I had this with Kreia. When she used the Force to bolster her strength or to heal, I was similarly affected.” Meetra grimaced. “That, and the shared pain, was how she convinced me that our lives were joined.”

“Obviously that was a lie in the end.” And thank the Force for that. “It would seem logical that there was something in the nature of the bond itself that would allow such a thing. Perhaps the intensity of the bond?”

“So it would seem. I can lend skill and speed to the others I am bonded with, but I do not share their wounds, nor do we share healing. Although none of them have your strength in the Force.” She propped herself up on her elbows. “Is this what you want? If the bond continues to develop—if it joins our lives—“

“I am not afraid.” He brushed his thumb lightly along her cheek and let her read the truth in him, but he didn’t allow her to linger on the thought. “Feeling better?”

She gave him a single nod. “We’re committed now. No sense in wasting energy second guessing ourselves.”

“Committed?” He echoed in a teasing tone. “Aren’t we moving a bit fast with this relationship?” While this war was not taking the direction that any of them had expected and they were about to dive straight into a planetary siege against every conventional textbook on tactics—even if the Force was dragging them there—he still couldn’t miss the opportunity to wind Mee up.

For the aforementioned reason, her love for him had always been punctuated by fond exasperation. “Oh? Pardon me for sparring with you and creating any misunderstanding. I had no idea that this was an Echani courtship ritual, even if our clothes stayed on. I’ll just be going now.”

“Stay.” He drew her towards him and kissed her with no particular haste but with rather more care than the last time. Revan was all too aware that he had next to no idea how to be a competent lover, his information sources on this subject being limited to the bawdy boasts of soldiers, some dry medical texts, implausible holovids, and the surface thoughts of many sentients. But how many sentients had the privilege of making love with the connection of a Force bond?

Eleven years ago, in orbit above Malachor V, they had crashed into each other, desperately wishing that touch alone could create an illusion of the bond. And as he had held her in the knowledge that this was the closest that most sentients came to one another, Revan could have been content with that. But this was—

This was so much more.

He kissed the tip of her nose before he explored her mouth at his leisure, finishing with a nip at her lower lip. She was still bracing her weight on her elbows and he felt that the contact between them was far too limited, so he flipped her onto her back and pinned her again with his weight, drawing a breathless laugh. They’d been plenty warm from the training, but a new heat was pooling between them, his body waking to the possibility of exploring all the ways that they fit together. His mouth trailed down the beautiful line of her neck, her pulse fluttering under his lips, matching the thunder of his own heart.

She slipped a hand under his shirt and stilled. “Oh, Revan…”

“Don’t pity me,” he replied, his tone harsher than he intended.

Her fingers stroked the rippled burn scar that covered much of his chest. Reading his thoughts, she said, “You didn’t deserve it.”

“It was the moment that I stopped being Darth Revan. So I thank Malak and Bastila both for it.” He regretted the words as they left his mouth. This was not the time to invoke a dead friend turned enemy and an almost lover.

“It was a mask. One of many, and not one that you need anymore.” She had always understood him all too well. Meetra was looking at him like nothing else mattered—not Malak, not Bastila, not the war, not Malachor. All that was in the past, and the present was theirs. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s sensitive at times, but the pain is by and large no more than a memory.” The sensation of plasma melting his flesh was one of the many things that he pushed from his thoughts. It had been one of his few true memories when he had woken up on the Endar Spire.

She lifted the fabric of his shirt in a slow, tentative motion, a silent request for consent in her eyes. He dipped his head in the smallest of nods, and she helped him pull the shirt over his head. Meetra ran her fingertips over the burn, then over scars both old and new, wordlessly cataloguing the passage of time that war had etched on his skin and flesh. Her gaze flicked back to meet his, then she said in a low voice, “I want to you to remember something else when you see that scar.”

Before she could deliver on her promise, heavy metallic footsteps and the hiss of pistons announced HK-47’s approach. Revan reached out with the Force, locking the door. “HK,” he said with audible strain in his voice, “Go…clean the refresher. Count the hydrospanners. Just go away.”

“Statement: this unit has been monitoring the meatbags on the surveillance cameras.”

Revan buried his face in the crook of Meetra’s neck with a groan. She clapped her hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking with repressed laughter.

“Query: are the meatbags intending to reproduce? Analysis: the spawn of Master Revan and Master Surik will have a high potential for violence and mass murder, judging by the past accomplishments of its progenitors. Statement: this unit will design a training curriculum in the event that such a meatbag is manufactured, even though the meatbag manufacturing process is both time-consuming and inefficient.”

Meetra extricated herself from under Revan and offered him a hand up. “I am not discussing this with a droid,” she declared as she unlocked the door, then she slipped past the assassin droid and vanished around the bend of the corridor.

“Thanks, HK,” Revan said in a caustic tone that should have liquefied the droid’s chassis. With a sigh, he pulled on his shirt, feeling like someone had thrown a bucket of ice cold water over him. The sensation continued unabated and Revan realised that it was Meetra doing just that in the refresher.

“Statement: you are welcome, master. I would hate to see you repeat your past mistakes while in a haze of pheromone induced psychosis.”

“Love isn’t pheromone induced psychosis, HK,” Revan said as he retrieved the vibrodaggers and a toolbox. It wasn’t clear to him why he was even debating this with a droid, and specifically the same droid who had described a kiss as contact of ‘slimy mucus-covered lips’.

“Definition: 'Love' is making a shot to the knees of a target one hundred and twenty kilometres away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope. Statement: while your memory issues may extend to your recall of this conversation, you have previously informed me that this definition is subject to interpretation. Obviously, 'love' is a matter of odds. Not many meatbags could make such a shot, and strangely enough, not many meatbags would derive love from it. Yet for me, love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticle, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds.”

Revan wondered how lonely he had been during the Jedi Civil War for him to have had conversations about love with an assassin droid. “Statistically long odds sounds about right,” he said dryly. He hadn’t expected a droid to be one of the numerous things tipping the scales against them, but there it was.

“Statement: I have updated my memory banks to reflect the current status of your relationship with Master Surik as a reproductive partnership, and have attached your addendum of the definition that ‘love is statistically long odds’.”

“That’s not what I—never mind.” Usually working with his hands was a guaranteed way to centre himself, but having this conversation at the same time was having the opposite effect.

“Statement: Master, I must say that my previous analysis of your relationship with the Jedi exile was incorrect due to incomplete information on your previous interactions. I had concluded that you pitied Master Surik’s capacity for forming connections with others. After all, you did say that it would be her downfall to tie so much of herself into others.”

“Did I?” He asked in a hollow voice. Revan wanted to believe that that he had been keeping his love a secret from an opinionated, talkative assassin droid, and nothing else.

“Statement: Master, your disbelief in the integrity of my memory banks is overloading my motivators. You did subject me to a partial memory wipe prior to your departure for the Unknown Regions, but my memories regarding the Jedi Civil War remain intact.”

Revan didn’t respond, instead bending over the workbench and concentrating on the job at hand. When he was done with the daggers, the walls would need patching. An easy fix compared to what he and Meetra hoped to achieve. Against statistically long odds, they wanted to save the galaxy, and to love one another while they were at it. Was that too much to ask of the universe?

Chapter 38: Knowledge Gaps

Chapter Text

Meetra liked most aspects of space travel, but hostile cannons pointing in their direction was definitely not on that list. They had arrived to find a division’s worth of firepower in orbit. That said, no one was firing, and there did appear to be some limited traffic in both directions.

“Not quite a blockade,” Revan observed. He was a fair pilot, if a little rusty and somewhat impatient with flight safety checklists. “Just a show of force to make people sweat every time they look up. Whoever is running this song and dance isn’t unnecessarily trigger happy.”

T3 beeped out an incoming automated transmission, which made Meetra tap a restless beat with her left foot. “Ground inspections of both incoming and outgoing vessels—that could be awkward.” Getting in was one thing, but getting out would be complicated.

It was just as well that Atton wasn’t with them. He didn’t need to be conscripted into another protracted war. The cruel truth was that he would have willingly flung himself into the front lines, if not for how she had wounded him by finally admitting her love for Revan. Since then, Atton had let slip the odd glimpse of light strobing over crowds of dancing sentients and voices slurred with juma, but little else.

Revan punched in the approach vector, but paused before he gunned the engines. “HK, I want you out of sight but on standby. Keep minimal systems running. If they interact with you, revert to protocol droid routines unless things get violent.”

She forced herself to concentrate on the present with its number of potential problems multiplying like gizka. “The Sith must have more boots on the ground if they’re just milling around in orbit. We don’t know if Lisaam’s managed anything more than staying alive while on the run, although they wouldn’t bring in an entire division for just one runaway. This might also be a good time to be less than truthful about our approach vector.”

“Master Surik, are you telling me that lying is acceptable?” Revan quirked a grin as he brought up a holo of the planet on the console. “The population is concentrated around the main city and shipyard, and apart from supply freighters, just about all other traffic was made up of wrecks limping to the shipyard. I can’t imagine that’s changed much.”

She was the worst master in the Jedi Order’s history, between allowing her Padawan to fall in love with her and then breaking his heart. “T3, do we have updated satellite maps for the planet?” The little droid gave them a confirmatory chirp. “There’ll be some unlisted spy satellites, but let’s pick a patch of sky with nothing pointing at it and hope for the best.”

Revan had been about to enter an alternate approach vector, but he paused and reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Hey, Mee? Exactly zero of your Padawans have become Sith Lords.”

It had to be said that Force bonds did have their disadvantages. She couldn’t even mope in private without Revan trying to cheer her up, a task that he regarded as a solemn duty and to which he applied both his undiluted efforts and his tactical acumen. She couldn’t help but snort. “That’s a low bar. So low as to be below sea level.”

“Tell Master Kae that. Actually, don’t, bad example. Speaking of the sea…seems like a nice private place for us to swing down.” His fingers danced over the console as he keyed in the new vector. “I can’t think of anyone better to have trained the new Jedi Council than you.”

“You are talking to the same person who uses Jedi robes as pyjamas, you know.”

“I think it’s a stroke of genius. And Jedi could stand to take themselves a little less seriously, you should have written that into the new code. Punch it, T3. Atmospheric reentry in T minus ten, nine…”

The Ebon H—the Serendipity blazed through the atmosphere, gravity reasserting itself as they approached the surface. There had been a time in her youth, when she was still a Padawan, that this time was always filled with the thrill of possibility, the promise of a new planet with a mission for the Jedi, the start of her life in service of peace and justice. She hadn’t abandoned those ideals, but war had found her again, and Revan had never managed to escape it. They had streaked through the skies of dozens of planets, bringing both death and liberation. This world would be no different.

Revan held the ship at cruising altitude, but the hull was still warm from reentry. “We should bring her down soon,” he commented, even though he too was admiring the view of the rugged coastline beneath them. Starships weren’t really designed for prolonged non-vacuum flight—they ran into issues with overheated engines and hulls.

“Southeast,” Meetra said, looking at the topography scans. “Take us in low. We can land there and get to the city by foot.” They had agreed that returning in the same ship was too risky after leaving hot the last time. A different transponder code wouldn’t help if someone simply recognised the ship itself.

Revan cast a critical eye over the suggested route. “Never heard of anyone crossing that mountain range before, so the ship should be safe, although it won’t be an easy walk into town. At least one of my safe houses should be intact—we haven’t been away for all that long. Remind me to check the comlink encryption before we move out.”

As it turned out, the mountain range was challenging enough for two people who could use the Force to jump, and only Jedi-honed reflexes saved both of them from falls off vertiginous cliffs, scrabbling to find balance along steep rock faces with treacherous scree. There was no shelter to be found, so they did the only thing that they could and kept moving forward.

Amidst the mud and ice and wind, with every muscle burning and her mind as numb as her cold fingers, she felt another familiar presence, as surely as she could hear him breathing beside her in meditation. Every other sense told her that Atton wasn’t there. He was somewhere light years away, playing pazaak in his head instead of meditating—as he often did—and Meetra felt like he had dealt her in and was waiting for her move, so she had to get herself into gear, fire up the jets and keep going. Somehow it was a little easier to fight off the heaviness and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

By the time they made it to the city walls and simply walked in between guard patrols, it had been thirty-seven hours since they had left the ship, and they had been awake for half a day before that coming out of hyperspace. Meetra was fatigued but mostly functional, although the world felt a little too bright, a little blurred around the edges. As she walked the streets, following Revan as he shouldered through the morning rush, she almost ran into him when he stopped to let a heavily armed guard patrol march past, everyone else giving the guards a similarly wide berth.

A warm hand took hers. “Are you okay?” Revan asked her.

“Yeah…fine. Just tired.”

Revan led her to a small stall where he ordered some sort of savoury bread roll. Meetra scarfed down three in record time, thinking that Atton would have liked the food, and the thought was somehow unexpectedly comforting. Atton’s presence had faded by the time they made it back to the first safe house that Revan had shown them. The refresher had no additional walls or any attempt at privacy, but Meetra was too tired to care, reasoning that it was nothing that Revan hadn’t seen before, even if that had been eleven years ago. Revan had been waiting seated on the floor with his back leaning against the wall, and he had nodded off by the time she was done, so she woke him with a kiss on the cheek. When he was cleaned up, he started unrolling his sleeping bag, but she caught his hand and pulled him into that flimsy single cot with her, where they both fell into a dead sleep.

*

She can’t breathe. Can’t move. Being crushed. Falling into darkness. Falling into Malachor—

“Meetra. Mee.”

The world shifted, then Meetra woke with a jerk and a gasp. Revan’s fingers were brushing her cheek, the line of her neck. His voice was very gentle. “You’re here. You’re safe. Breathe.”

It took her a moment to get her bearings. It was dark, and either very late or very early, judging by the hush over the city. She wasn’t being crushed by jagged rock, but instead was squashed into a single cot with Revan, which had seemed like a great idea to her tired brain.

“You know, I should have insisted on sleeping on the floor. Not because this isn’t nice, or out of any prudishness or chivalry, but…I can’t feel my left arm.” The dim glow from the streetlight outside the window outlined his grin, but there was concern in his eyes.

“Sorry.” She went to sit up, but he wrapped his one functioning arm around her.

“Don’t go, let’s just—that’s good.” They settled back down, nose to nose, Revan’s numb arm tucked in the crook between Meetra’s neck and shoulder. He flexed the fingers of his hand to get the circulation going, his eyes searching her face. “Does this happen often?”

“Not as much as it used to.”

“I see.” He dried the corners of her eyes with edge of his sleeve and held her until her breathing calmed. He didn’t ask, but she could sense him waiting to see if she wanted to talk about it.

Malachor V was in the past, and she had the present and the future to worry about. “We’re still alive,” she said, “Despite taking no precautions whatsoever.”

When other people pointed out the obvious, Revan’s reaction usually ranged from condescension to derision, but a lucky few got to see his gentler side, and Meetra knew she was foremost on that list. “We made it to the safe house. And…I think that we are in the eye of the storm.”

“I feel it too.” There were thousands of people in the city and in orbit who would like to kill them. Somehow, she still felt at peace.

“You know,” he said conversationally, “For someone who is both shorter and skinnier than I am, you take up an inordinate amount of space.”

“I’d just like to call your attention to the fact that the cot is listing dangerously in your direction.”

He chuckled, the laughter rumbling through her ribs as well. “This whole waking up together thing is a novel experience. For us. For me.”

“Me too,” she admitted quietly. They had not held each other for long after Malachor, and in the years since, Meetra had not allowed anyone to get that close. She could see in Revan’s face that he had suspected as much, and this merely confirmed it. “But I could get used to this.”

His expression was almost unbearably tender. She’d been raised to stiffen her quivering upper lip, even though her attempts were usually abysmal failures. All the Jedi had concealed their emotions with mask upon masks. Even Revan had worn a wry smile over every inner storm before he had covered that with armour. But now there was no armour, no mask, no hiding from the love written on his face. “I’d like that,” he said.

She traced his smile with her thumb before she kissed him, trying to return the tenderness that he gave her. He let her melt into him, both of their hearts drumming a little faster with every touch. Then without warning, Revan tensed with a sudden jolt, breaking free to place a hand on her shoulder and hold them a few inches apart. “Are you sure that this is what you want?”

She rested her palm over his heartbeat. “Yes. And is this what you want?”

He laughed then, subjecting himself to his own wry scrutiny. “Mee, I don’t think that it should come as a surprise that I’ve wanted this for a very long time. But before my reason abandons me entirely—I do not think we should risk bringing a child into this.”

Being raised as a Jedi left a person bereft of any idea of what to do in a startling number of normal life situations. Mira, however, had foreseen this. Meetra struggled to explain this with any degree of tact. “Remember Mira? Well, last year she turned up in the dorm one day and dumped a crate on my bunk. Told me that I would need it one day. And the crate was full of, ah, medications and consumables along those lines. Plus a couple of handcuffs covered with faux fur, for some reason. And a really low voltage stun baton—no combat applicability whatsoever.”

Revan looked like he had been hit by a stun baton himself. “The bounty hunter? Why would she—“ Comprehension crossed his face. “Ah. Was she aware of Atton’s feelings for you?”

“She has asked if we had hooked up a power coupling.” Mira had also point blank told Meetra to make spacing sure that Atton didn’t knock her up, and had subjected a chagrined Meetra to a detailed explanation of the more practical items in the crate. The inclusion of the handcuffs and the stun baton remained a mystery.

“Right.” Revan processed all of this with a furrow between his brows. “And have you…utilised any of those things?”

“Hang on.” She peeled herself out of the cot, dug through her pack and produced a small bag, which she handed to Revan before climbing back in next to him. He rummaged through it, looking perplexed. Meetra plucked one of the packets out of his fingers. “I was told that this one would probably be the best option.”

“I’ve rarely been more conscious of gaps in my knowledge, and this is coming from someone who had his mind wiped,” he muttered while reading the instructions.

Meetra laughed. “Here, let me look at that too. In fairness to us, this wasn’t part of our education.”

“Can you imagine Vrook or Vandar having to explain all this to us?”

She buried her face in Revan’s chest, laughing all the harder. “Please, Revan, this isn’t the time to be putting that sort of picture in my head.”

“That did feel like a bucket of cold water,” he conceded. “But it doesn’t mean that we can’t otherwise have fun figuring all this out. Now, where were we?”

“Right here.” She found his mouth again with hers.

He smiled against her lips before he rolled himself over her, settling their hips together with a glint in his eyes, and she shared his rush of desire. “Actually, I think this is where we left off last time. Or rather, we were on the floor.”

Meetra reached out to tap the cot leg, which had been creaking ominously with every shift in weight. “We may well end up there sooner rather than later.”

Revan leaned in, kissing her hard, then he hooked a hand under each of her thighs and got off the cot, lifting Meetra with ease. She ran her hands up his arms, down his chest and back, all lean muscle and wiry strength. He set her down on his partially unrolled sleeping bag from the morning before. “There we go,” he murmured. “No breaking furniture or injuries to distract us.”

The Jedi had tried to make them forget how to love. But a heart that had loved and had been loved in return was marked as surely as the stars shaped the galaxy with light and warmth. She remembered. She remembered her love for him, the whys and the hows and all the spaces in between. Her very existence had been wiped from Revan’s mind, and yet he had remembered all the same, and their winding paths had led them back to one another.

It was different from the time that they had stolen in the skies above Malachor, when their wounds were raw and they were saying goodbye. This time, there was no war between them, no armour that she had to peel off from around his heart. This time, there was no despair in his eyes before he trailed his lips down her bare shoulder. This time, they mapped each other’s bodies with mouths and fingers, new discoveries sometimes punctuated by laughter, sometimes by a gentle touch that sought to write over the past scarred into their flesh, sometimes by a sharp inhalation and a whispered request for more.

This wasn’t the sum total of their love. This was merely an affirmation of what they felt. Who they were. What they chose: to be together, to be closer to each other than to anyone else. They were already connected, their lives intertwined, every emotion and sensation amplified and shared. They made love unhurriedly, as if they had the rest of their lives ahead of them. They made love like the universe outside that shabby room would never tear them apart again.

Chapter 39: To See The World

Chapter Text

Revan’s guess was that Lisaam and the freed slaves would have fled outside the city walls, but he could not exclude the possibility of them hiding in the outer slums, which had been the periphery of the shipyard where ships went to die. Every part that could be scavenged was scraped out of those ships, leaving skeletons and husks rusting in silence as the part of the shipyard where hammers sang and sparks flew progressively migrated further and further away.

They gathered intelligence about the Sith presence while they searched, breaking the slums into sections that could be covered on foot in shifts. Meetra insisted that they split up to cover more ground. She kept them concealed to a point—a weaker Force user would never detect them, but a stronger one who was actively searching was harder to deflect unless Meetra was wholly concentrating on hiding their presence.

The strategic approach would have taken them weeks, but as it turned out, the Force threw them a bone, as was often the case. They were only several days in when Revan caught a brief glimpse of a familiar face and lekku before they were concealed under a hood. He had been waiting in the shadow of a leaning freighter wreck, watching the people who lived there. A Sith patrol had just passed by, kicking a few people into the dust, firing a few shots into the sky, shouting vague threats about giving up the dissidents and generally strutting around in one of those pointless shows of force. The people living there had simply picked themselves back up, dusted themselves off, then carried on. It was then that Revan saw Lisaam slip out of another shadow to follow the patrol.

Revan pulled his worn hat lower over his head, then caught up with Lisaam with long strides. When he was close enough, he called her name in a low voice.

She whirled around with a blade in hand, bringing her hands into a guard, then relaxed it when she saw Revan. “You returned,” she said in a low voice. “I did not think that you would.”

Revan nodded for her to follow and they walked into the hollow hull of a capital ship, the structure sagging from decades of weather eating away at the metal. “Where are the others?”

“Hiding. Surviving. Fighting back.” While Revan lacked Meetra’s powerful empath abilities, he had a keen eye when it came to reading sentients, and he could tell that Lisaam was not lying. The Twi-lek was trying to probe him in much the same way, as well as testing his mental defences with clumsy prods. “Why did you return? Where are your friends?”

He tapped one finger on his temple. “You can stop that now. It’s considered bad manners. Meetra felt that you would need our help.”

Lisaam’s laugh was caustic. “Help? After you wiped out everyone at the temple and caused the empire to crack down on us? People are starving. Barely any ships are coming in, and not nearly enough supplies for a city this size with no agriculture. The soldiers are executing people at random to try to draw out the people responsible for the temple massacre and destroying multiple ships. To draw you out. So keep your kriffing help. Things are bad enough. We don’t need it to get worse.”

“If we had left the planet without paying the temple a visit, you would have been hunted down and killed by now,” Revan pointed out in the voice of reason. “And don’t you find it interesting that the Sith sent so much firepower for one runaway acolyte and a group of slaves? I certainly do. That, and the fact that you’re still alive despite the odds. It rather makes me think that you’ve gained support, possibly from unexpected places.”

The Sith had never taught Lisaam any other way to react to emotion than to turn it into rage, so she erupted. “What the kark do you think you know?”

Revan was unmoved in the face of her anger. She was a scared child backed into a corner, lashing out in fear and ignorance. “I am not your enemy. I suspect much but know little. But I do know that you are afraid, and that you carry a heavy burden. We want to help you—things can and will get a lot worse than what they are. You know this.”

Lisaam’s lekku twitched as she searched Revan’s face. “Meetra…is that your friend? The woman?” When Revan inclined his head, Lisaam came to a decision. “I do not trust you. But I will speak to her. Tell her to come after sundown to these coordinates. Do not follow me after this, or we will turn you in to the Sith. They want blood—break my trust and they will have yours.”

*

“She’s a tough one to crack,” Meetra commented when Revan relayed what had happened in the safe house above the swoop garage. Meetra had been tasked with counting the numbers in a nearby makeshift barracks, and had ended up with an estimate of one hundred and fifty soldiers in their immediate surroundings. She had returned hungry, but all they had was synth slop, which she was spooning into her mouth with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. It was still more than many others had, and they both wanted to preserve their small stash of ration bars.

“The others will be looking to her for leadership. A healthy dose of caution is the only thing that has kept them alive so far—but I don’t like this. I do not believe that she wishes us harm, but the Sith may have eyes on her already.”

Persuading Revan to split up for reconnaissance had been challenging enough, and she sensed that it would be easier for her to shift the local star than it would be to move him to allow her to go entirely unaccompanied, so she offered a compromise. “Stay at least three hundred metres away and out of sight.” At peak Force-enhanced speed, that distance could be covered in a matter of seconds. “And you can patrol the surrounding area for any unfriendly eyes and ears.”

Revan weighed it up for a moment. “Two hundred metres and out of sight. Got it.” He waited to see if Meetra would push him on the point of the distance, but she let it go. She had a feeling that Revan would be a hundred metres away at best, and while her instincts told her that going to meet Lisaam was the right thing to do, she could also sense that the storm was about to catch up with them.

They took turns having fitful naps, and Meetra in particular slept poorly, as every moment that she was not conscious was a moment that the flare of Revan’s presence went unshrouded. Jedi training notwithstanding, she was terse and had a headache by the time they made their way towards the meeting location. Lisaam was waiting for her in a doorway of a row of nondescript houses, and Meetra pushed her hood back so that the other woman could see her.

The Twi’lek’s voice was strained. “What do you want?”

“To see the world that you are trying to build,” Meetra said gently, and she felt a knot of tension in Lisaam unwind. The wind was picking up, lifting the city smog and sending stinging motes of dust and ash into their eyes.

“I never asked for this. But now—they’re all looking at me, asking me what to do. We’ve even had some defectors from the soldiers who came with the fleet. But there’s not enough of us.”

“More will come. They want to kill you because you dare to hope,” Meetra said. “And giving people ideas that life doesn’t have to be like this is dangerous. Keep surviving. Keep fighting. Keep hoping. What help I have to give is yours.”

The Twi’lek shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. You mustn’t be here. We have a few people, still on the inside. They want to capture you. Orders are for you be taken to the Emperor. All they have is a vague description, and any human who remotely fits that has been taken off world. Some of the people who came to us promising help—I can’t read them. I don’t know if they are truly allies or if they were using us to get to you.“

Through the bond, Meetra felt Revan’s warning, as unmissable as a klaxon. “The latter. Trouble’s found us.” She drew her blaster in one hand and vibrodagger in the other. Lisaam drew her own weapons, weighing if Meetra was about to turn on her, but blaster fire rang out over the roofs. “You have to survive this, Lisaam. Find the spies in your ranks. Now, go.”

The Twi’lek chewed her lip then nodded. “Don’t get caught. Sewer entrance by the south gate, take the western tunnel for two klicks then up the ladder. One of my people will find you.” With that, she activated a stealth generator and Meetra heard her footfalls as the girl rushed away. Someone was going to have to train her if they all survived this.

Meetra faded from sight then leapt up to the roof across the alley in a single bound. There was a platoon of Sith troopers scattered both on rooftops and in the alleys around. If it had just been she and Revan, they could have evaded the Sith, just killed whoever stood between them and escape if necessary. But Lisaam could use a hand. Meetra was confident that the Twi’lek would be able to manage several soldiers on her own, but sustained fire from an entire platoon would fell most Jedi knights, and from what they had seen, Lisaam was still no more than a moderately experienced Padawan in skill.

Meetra vaulted across to the next roof, where three Sith were stationed with rifles trained on the alley below, and they were going to shoot to kill. Her vibrodagger opened one throat, found the gap between chest and arm plate on a second, and she used him as a human shield from blaster fire before she dropped the remaining Sullustan with her blaster. Sixteen years after she had first taken a life, it was no easier. Revan read her intention to make some noise, so he did exactly that with a borrowed sonic grenade. They kept to the roofs, cutting a swathe towards each other until they met under a tattered awning snapping in the wind. After they were both satisfied that the other was not injured, they melted into the shadows together, their objectives completed while the remaining Sith continued to blunder about in the dark.

Chapter 40: Some Kinda Anti-Sith

Chapter Text

The rebellion against the Sith Empire had not started with such lofty aims. It was born from a Sith acolyte—so fresh that some still called her wet behind her lekku—learning about defiance and a bunch of freed slaves. Some of those slaves had been pit fighters and disgraced troopers, as well as victims of the empire’s expansion, and from this small core of malnourished and abused people who just wanted to survive, a rebellion was born. The more boots of the Sith were pressed into the necks of the citizens, the more people rallied to their cause. Some people joined because they wanted to stick it to authority, and others because they could stand by no longer.

That rapid influx was the cause of the current chaos in what passed for the rebellion headquarters, which was housed in an old shipyard hull repair shed. The instruments used to test the hull integrity when faced with the pressure differential of space flight had long since been moved on, so there was plenty of space for sentients to crowd in, cooking and sleeping wherever they could find an empty corner. Meetra and Revan, who had both overseen thousands of troops, immediately wondered where the latrines were, but that train of thought was interrupted by the armed stand-off with Lisaam in the middle of it all.

Revan was interested in seeing how the kid was going to deal with it—Lisaam reminded him of Mission, albeit with sharper edges. The Twi’lek had turned a deep, verdant colour in anger, and she shouted, “I said, all of you, shut up!”

Their guide from the sewers was a gruff Devaronian, who looked impressed when a hush fell over the ragged assembly. “Good time to make an entrance,” he said in his language.

A thin, middle-aged woman sneered, even though her grip on her blaster was shaking. “Yer said that one of us new folk are to blame, and yer’d add even more new ones? Why the frack should we trust any of youse?”

Lisaam turned a black gaze on the woman, who dropped hers almost immediately. “Because these two are Jedi.”

Not exactly how Revan had wanted to be introduced, but they could work the angle. A murmur rippled through the crowd, some of whom had looks of recognition on their face when Meetra and Revan pushed their hoods back. They both wore the masks expected of them—calm, impenetrable mystique—but their eyes raked the crowd, marking their reactions. Without needing to discuss it, Revan focused on the ring of armed people around them, while Meetra scanned the people gathered on the catwalks and scaffolding above. No one else who was obviously Force-sensitive.

“What the kriff is a Jedi?”

“Someone said they’re some kinda anti-Sith.”

“Sounds like delusional bantha crap.”

“Karking fairy tale. Next they’ll be telling us that the Sith have some virus that lets them use the Force.”

“Ain’t no Jedi around here,” a scrawny adolescent jeered from a level above. Meetra turned her calm gaze towards him and the scorn melted from the boy’s face. She didn’t linger on this minute victory, her gaze tracking a young woman who was making her way toward the exit while affecting an air of unconcern.

“Put the weapons down,” Revan said, feeling Meetra reinforce his command, drawing on the Force that sang through every living being in the room. The sentients around them complied, a little perplexed by their sudden pliability.

The mouthy teenager found his tongue again with Meetra’s laser gaze elsewhere. “They just look like spacers. If they’re Jedi, prove it!”

“Why don’t you come down here and find out, Kear?” Lisaam called out, her colour darkening again.

Revan felt a familiar sensation. During his second apprenticeship on Dantooine, Master Zhar had asked him to describe how he knew that an attack was coming, and his facetious answer was that it felt like the breath of a beautiful woman on his skin, which the master had taken rather sanguinely. In retrospect, that must have been confirmation that the implanted personality had not yet been dislodged by Revan’s true nature. In truth, it felt like a memory of the future, a ghost of pain if he did not move. So before the shooter’s finger curled around the trigger, Revan was already going for his lightsaber, and the bolt was deflected back at the shooter, a pale man who looked part Echani.

Meetra used the Force to launch herself to the upper level where the young woman had broken into a sprint amidst the general panic of everyone scrambling for cover. Lisaam had already grappled the injured man, so Revan opened his mind to his surroundings, finding a third mind that was filled with bright, urgent thoughts of needing to report this, right until the instant that Revan arrested his flight without so much as lifting a finger—relying on gestures to tap into the Force was not compatible with being a dual wielder. Revan strode up to the immobilised man without any particular haste, then checked him over for comlinks, datapads and audio recorders, all of which he tossed to the Devaronian guide. Others started drifting closer, curiosity overriding their urge to avoid any further threat to life and limb, and the debate about Jedi started up again.

“Nice lightsaber. Looks like a glorified lightbulb. Do they come in any other colours?”

“So that’s what the fracking Jedi look like, eh?”

“I still think they’re full of sh*t.”

“Easy on the eyes though. Real easy.”

“Shut up, you horny old schutta.”

“Never mind the lass, I’d let the lad ride me like a tauntaun.”

The other woman was pinned to the ground with Meetra’s knee on her back, arms twisted behind while Meetra emptied the Sith’s pockets with her free hand. When Meetra’s head suddenly snapped up, Revan glimpsed the hostile red aura in her vision—no, there were two—and he pulled two more hooded figures back from the exit with the Force. Meetra disarmed them in the same way as they fumbled for their blasters, throwing the weapons out of reach. The woman under her bucked, trying to throw Meetra off in her moment of distraction, but Meetra placed a hand on the back of her head and she went limp, sliding into unconsciousness.

Meetra stood slowly, allowing Revan to take over restraining all five sentients with mental shackles. “I think that’s all of them.”

He used the Force to line them all up on the ground level of the shed, Lisaam watching with her mouth hanging open. She murmured, “I’ve never seen anyone do that. Not even the masters at the temple.” It was a party trick as far as Revan was concerned, but there was a chorus of impressed sounds in the background. There were three human males, a human female and a Rodian. Meetra grabbed a box of zip ties off a startled Wookiee’s table despite his growled grumble, then bound their arms and legs, as well as gagging them with some borrowed rags before Revan released his paralysing grip. They checked the prisoners for hidden weapons and comlinks, ignoring the hatred in their gazes.

“How’re we supposed to know if these arseholes are actually Sith? Maybe these so-called Jedi are the Sith.”

Meetra threw a data pad from the Rodian’s pocket at the latest complainer, a fidgety, nervous fellow who looked like he was sprinting down the slope to full-blown spice addiction. “Have a look.”

The man’s face slowly turned the colour of ferrocrete, although it wasn’t immediately clear whether the cause was the contents of the datapad or the terrifying attention of a Jedi. He stammered, “I-it has our coordinates. And a-a description of Lisaam…and t-the Jedi.”

Meetra touched Lisaam on the shoulder and spoke to her in a low voice. “We need to know everything that anyone here knows about these people, but first, we need to move. The Sith will pay this place a visit when these agents don’t report back.”

Lisaam pulled herself together with admirable speed. Even if both Meetra and Revan could still see the trembling child underneath, most would not. “Everyone, pack up. We move out in twenty minutes. Weapons and rations come first. Leave everything that you can’t carry behind.” She gestured imperiously at another Twi’lek. “Get us a map. And a way out of here.”

“And the prisoners?” Meetra asked. Revan immediately understood that it was a test.

Lisaam looked at the five people lying helplessly in the dirt and something ugly crossed her face. Revan recognised the vicious look of someone had been kicked down into the dirt herself, and who wanted to repay the favour.

“Lisaam.” Meetra’s gaze was unwavering.

The Twi’lek’s face crumpled for an instant before she set her jaw. “Leave them here. A message for the Sith.”

Revan still remembered a time when Malak would have declared such a decision to be a sign of weakness. And perhaps this wasn’t the most merciful thing to do—the Sith would punish them severely for this failure, and a blaster bolt to the brain might have spared them unthinkable suffering. But should the Sith deal with them as they usually did with perceived failures, it would spread fear and doubt within their own ranks, especially after the rebels had been the ones to show mercy.

Revan had won a war of conversion in the past, but in the opposite direction, when he had taught the Jedi to shed peace in favour of a hollow freedom so that they could be forged into more effective weapons. Under his command, they had been allowed to use whatever methods necessary to achieve victory, and had drawn strength from the rage of battle. Off the battlefield, they had forsaken the code in other ways—Atton had previously made an offhanded but accurate comment about the Jedi in the Mandalorian Wars going at it like gizka in mating season. In that regard, Revan had proved to be a hypocrite, never personally indulging in any of those mundane passions. Not that he had ever wanted to, given the singularity of his desire.

This war of conversion would be more difficult. But Meetra had a solid track record of ending wars and bringing peace, which would come in handy after Revan had shown the Sith the light by setting their empire aflame.

Chapter 41: Fighting with the Disadvantage

Chapter Text

After that, it was war again, albeit a strange one. The fleet waited in orbit, the capital ship and dreadnoughts just visible to the naked eye, starfighters buzzing low over the shipyard at irregular intervals. The Sith soldiers stamped all over the city, leaving blaster scorch marks on the streets and walls, while the odd red lightsaber was waved around.

It was not to say that she and Revan were unfamiliar with fighting with the disadvantage. They had been keen students of the art of war, even if their current resources were even more limited and the battlegrounds were measured in streets rather than galactic sectors. They found new bases, educated Lisaam and the others about how to run an army, including the importance of proper hygiene and latrines. They helped them set up supply chains and weapon depots. They claimed landing pads, which meant that they could retrieve the Ebon Hawk and created options for moving noncombatants to relative safety, as well as enabling supply drops from off world because no armada could monitor an entire planet. They raided the Sith for equipment and even intervened when the Sith tried kicking someone into the ground where the rebels had enough blasters in the general vicinity. Most of the Sith were spectacularly unprepared for foes who actually fought back, and were particularly defenceless against HK-47, who was all too delighted to test out the latest of his ongoing upgrades. The assassin droid spent this period in a glow of contented pride, insistently reporting his extraordinary mission statistics on a daily basis to both his masters.

Word got out that there were Jedi leading the rebellion. Revan would occasionally remark that they needed to get Lisaam a new lightsaber crystal, and the colour confusion certainly became a bit of an issue for the troops as they battled the Sith Force-users. They had agreed that anyone who surrendered was offered the chance to redeem themselves after being disarmed, and despite Meetra’s fear that her mistake would be repeated, Lisaam proved to be a surprisingly good judge of character apart from her distrust of Revan, although she did eventually warm up to him.

A number of Force-users had surrendered and were being watched over by guards armed with plasma, sonic and stun weapons. Revan and Meetra had set aside a few days to assess the allegiances of the latest handful. She didn’t particularly like using her ability in this manner, but she could not see a more reliable way of ensuring loyalty. They meditated together, spent time in hushed conversation, and she could already sense the current of their thoughts. Lisaam joined them for the group evening meditation session, then the three had dinner together in the cramped, makeshift command centre that Meetra shared with Revan.

Lisaam licked the last of her synth slop from the bowl, not wasting a speck. Rations were tight and Force-users needed more calories than their fair share. That done, she sighed and leaned back in her chair until it tipped back to rest against the wall. “So,” she said in an overly casual tone, “I’ve been meaning to ask, are you two married?”

Meetra’s mouthful of synth slop almost went down the wrong way and she dissolved into fits of coughing. Revan thumped her on the back. “You okay, Mee?”

Lisaam grinned. “Should I take that as a yes?”

When he was satisfied that Meetra wasn’t going to choke to death, Revan shrugged. “Marriage, as in the culturally and legally recognised union between two people?”

Meetra’s eyes were still streaming, but she recognised the mischief in Revan’s eyes. “Revan—“

“My droid has us registered as a reproductive partnership, does that count?”

“Confirmation: that is correct, Master Revan, although I am compelled to point out that since that status was updated, my sensors indicate that Masters Revan and Surik have yet to begin manufacturing their shared meatbag spawn. Might I suggest that they direct more of their efforts towards this stated goal?”

Lisaam almost fell off her chair wheezing with laughter. “Spawn…reproductive…”

Meetra buried her face in her hands, taking in a deep breath before she screamed. She then glared at Revan, who grinned back at her. “Explain yourself.”

“You got me, I never got around to tweaking those humour algorithms. We’ve been busy.” He plastered an innocent look on his face and held his hands up in apology, but the corners of his mouth kept twitching.

T3 chirped a question, which made Revan cave into laughter. Meetra gathered herself and replied in a voice with a lightsaber’s cutting power, “No, T3, we are not manufacturing—“ she curled her second and third fingers as she continued, “—new miniature Jedi units.”

“Analysis: Master Revan, given the incompatibility of your stated objective when compared to Master Surik’s, might I recommend that you reconsider the status of your relationship?”

Revan’s expression shifted to halfway between a grin and a grimace. “HK, just drop the subject. Now.”

Lisaam managed to straighten up even though she was still breathless from wringing every last chuckle out of her lungs. “Force, I needed that. So, what’s the story, Surik? Is this why you don’t recite the Jedi code while the Sith made us shout theirs a hundred times a day?”

“I never was a very good Jedi,” she said. Neither she nor Revan volunteered that he had been far worse. Perhaps it was lying by omission, but it was not useful information for their cause. “And the Jedi aren’t right about everything. But I do believe that you can find peace within emotion. And you can make the right choices despite emotion. Or because of it.”

Revan shoved his hand in his pocket—she could tell that if not for the company, he would have taken her hand and pressed a kiss to it. Truth be told, HK was right. They had precious little time alone together. With personnel resources as thin as they were, she and Revan had to cover all sorts of roles, plus they had forbidden the rebels from engaging any of the Sith Force-users without at least one of them present, which was difficult when more red lightsabers were running around with every passing day. They were training the rebels, trying to find a middle ground between standards and speed, in everything from organisation to espionage to Force-user countermeasures, then fitting in meditation and training with Lisaam on top of all that. They tried to sleep in shifts as well for multiple reasons. The first was so that the one of them was continuously cloaking their presences in the Force. It also so that the rebellion had round the clock access to someone who could make decisions, and more cynically, so that it was harder to betray them. Both of them had mastered the art of sleeping in the cot shoved in the corner of that room while the other worked.

Lisaam nodded, giving the matter some thought. “Force knows I still want to stab some of those kriffing bastards in the eye. We’ll see. I might just yet.” There was a small flare of anger, born of an old, calcified resentment nurtured by a child that was all too familiar with both hunger and the lash. “In any case, much as I enjoy watching Surik squirm instead of keeping up her perfect angel routine, I came for more than a chat. The Sith have caught six of our people on the inside, and they’ve announced a public execution in—“ she checked the time, “—about twenty hours, unless the Jedi are given up. It’s to be in the city square.”

“They are trying to flush us out.” Revan sounded resigned. They had previously discussed why such tactics had not been used earlier, and Meetra’s hypothesis was that Jedi had been absent from the Empire for such a long time that they’d forgotten a great deal of the specifics of how to get under a Jedi’s skin. The Sith did execute civilians to try to get to them, and Meetra heard the faint echoes of those screams. But she was never in a position to do anything about it at the time. But this—now that they had a little rendezvous organised, they could not walk away.

“Well, kriff me sideways, Revan can see right through them! What else did you karking think?” Lisaam was turning a violently verdant colour again.

Meetra kept her gaze fixed on Revan, but before she could say anything, he read her intention and attempted to cut off that line of thinking. “If we’re going to walk into that trap, maybe we’ll just save them the trouble. Cuff ourselves and destroy our lightsabers. Tie a little bow on our heads while we’re at it.” While Meetra knew that Revan loved her as surely as the stars burned in the sky, he also had a lifetime’s practice at knocking her off an even keel, both metaphorically and literally.

“I’m not saying that we let them dictate how this goes.” If there was one thing that she missed from the Mandalorian Wars, it was the fact that in those days, Revan had a less pronounced knee-jerk reaction to anything which put her even remotely in harm’s way. “They don’t know what we’re capable of.”

“I don’t know what you’re capable of,” Lisaam said in a sour tone. “And why is there only two of you?”

Meetra and Revan shared a look. “It’s a long story,” she said. “But we can defend ourselves. Adequately.”

“Are Jedi always this kriffing vague?” Lisaam could not have looked more annoyed if someone had dumped a steaming pile of bantha excrement in her lap, and it was clear that was precisely her opinion of Jedi communication skills.

Revan folded his arms, but there was reluctant amusem*nt tugging at his lips. “It’s part of the curriculum. All right, Mee, let’s hear what gizka-brained idea you’ve cooked up this time.”

“Gizka aren’t military strategists.” Meetra had almost forgotten what it was like to have a meeting without back talk. Republic admirals and generals were much more polite than Revan and Lisaam.

“Nor are they expert hackers. We’ve been over this.” A glint in his eye, a callback to a different time, and only Revan could think that being called a gizka was a term of endearment. Although that was probably her fault.

“Aww, that’s how I guessed that you two were a thing. The mushy way that you keep looking at each other.” Both Revan and Meetra broke eye contact to glare at the younger woman, who simply looked smug. It was stunning progress from a girl who used to fear any attention as it came with the promise of pain. Lisaam trusted them to not hurt her.

Meetra fully intended to live up to that expectation. She laid out a few bones of a plan. Revan did not even pause for breath before he proposed an alternative. It became their usual game of wrangling various additions and subtractions until it looked little like what they had started with, but was solid and clear in a way that Meetra’s ideas rarely achieved when she was alone.

The Sith wanted them captured or dead. They wanted their people safe. They wanted the location of the Emperor.

Someone was going to be very disappointed tomorrow, but it was going to be one hell of a show for everyone.

Chapter 42: The Web of Life

Chapter Text

“If Atton was here, he’d be telling me that he had a bad feeling about this. Although that seems rather self-evident at this point.” Meetra mumbled to Revan.

One of Revan’s most effective traits as a commander was his almost preternatural ability to stay calm in any situation, even though his heart rate was not far off her own. “I can say with a high degree of certainty that they won’t be expecting this.”

They were standing in the hallway in front of the capital ship’s command centre. It had all gone to plan so far. Meetra’s fear that the salvaged shuttle would bring an ignominious end to their crusade by decompression had not come to pass, and they remained undetected. The new coat of paint on the shuttle was still tacky, but that combined with some stolen Sith credentials had bought them passage onto the capital ship. The rebels had also acquired Sith officer uniforms for both of them, the collar of which was making Meetra’s neck itch. Their lightsaber hilts were concealed along inner pockets sewn into the wide uniform belts, pressing into their waists front and back uncomfortably. It was a small price to pay for keeping up the charade for as long as possible. Meetra concentrated on keeping their presence muffled while Revan did the talking. His stint as the Dark Lord of the Sith had taught him to layer menace over his voice, to the point that he had not even needed to use the Force to get them through the ship.

He rolled his neck to either side with a crack, then looked over at her, his eyes crinkling into a smile even if his mouth remained pressed in a straight line. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

Revan touched the door console and they both straightened into military postures as the doors hissed open. The outer ring of the command centre had a hum of hushed activity, consoles alight with data feeds about the fleet’s movements, others holograms showing the city below. There were live camera feeds showing the city square, where soldiers were patrolling the deserted streets. The planned execution was still a few hours away. She and Revan had decided to save the Sith all the trouble of looking for them, and had turned up early like overly enthused party guests on top of that.

A man in black robes stood on the central dais, his back turned towards them. Meetra had felt warmer on the Telosian pole than she did in the presence of that being. His hood was pushed back to show a head of thinning grey hair, which blended with the pallid skin underneath.

“What are you doing here?” The source of the annoyed question was a harassed-looking Sullustan.

“Reporting, thirty-third infantry division.” Revan said in a neutral voice. “My troopers intercepted and interrogated a rebel who was attempting to tap into our communications array. He stated that the Jedi has been moved off world.”

This caught the attention of the Sith Lord. He turned to them and everyone in their general vicinity stiffened. An unfortunate officer was crumpled on the floor, her neck crushed and lying at an angle that was not compatible with life. She had obviously been left there as a little reminder for the benefit of her remaining colleagues.

A voice spoke directly to their minds. “Where?”

Revan’s reply was bland, but Meetra had the feeling that he was trying to rile the Sith Lord much as he used to annoy the Jedi Masters. “He expired before he could give us anything of use.”

The Sith Lord’s head turned this way and that in a manner that made Meetra think of a blind animal sniffing. “Curious. Come here.”

Revan took a step forward, still standing at attention. “Yes, sir?”

How the Sith Lord imagined the next moment was that Revan should have dropped to his knees, pleading for his life with the last of his breath for such disrespect. How it actually went was Revan shrugging off the choke and launching himself at the Sith Lord, silver lightsaber in hand. The Sith Lord threw him aside, Revan landing on his feet, both his lightsabers flaring to life in a guard.

Meetra was similarly armed and was already trying to pierce his mental defences. This Sith Lord knew where the Emperor was, and what the palace held. The Sith Lord sneered as he lashed back at her, sending a carbonite shard of pain through her left temple. “The Jedi cowards.”

“Run,” she said to the nearest Sith, who was a Twi’lek trembling from the tip of his lekku down to his toes as he aimed a blaster at her. “You do not have to serve him anymore.” Revan tended to be cynical of the motives of others. He was not wholly wrong, but he was not entirely correct either. A skirmish started amongst the members of the Sith Lord’s staff, although it was unclear who was trying to achieve what in that mess.

She and Revan focused on the Sith Lord, leaving the others to their own conflict. Two dozen or so Sith Force users trickled in to join the fray, another one stepping in every time one was dispatched. Before the war, there had been an ongoing debate about which of Kavar, Alek or Revan was the greatest lightsaber duellist of their generation. Only one remained of the three, and Meetra felt Revan’s strength and skill course through her. Perhaps Mical was right in that she was no parasite. She knew that Atton had drawn on her when he had duelled with Sion, her own knowledge of Sion from their fight on Korriban and her years of training giving Atton enough of an edge to survive, and she had never felt the weaker for it. Revan certainly did not seem hindered in any way by sharing his strength with her. They wove through the forms as was needed, one always complementing the other. An opportunity to strike never went wasted, and they were still relatively uninjured. They shouldn’t have been able to keep up such a pace, but Meetra could feel the pulse of the planet below, the Force itself singing in their ears.

It ended with the Sith Lord’s lightsaber hilt destroyed and all his limbs amputated. The Sith Lord laughed in a weak croak, and Meetra sensed that he would sooner die than surrender. “I brought order. The strong rise. The weak serve them. A millennia spent building this empire will not be so easily undone. Go on then, find him, little whelps. He is not so easy to kill. He will consume you utterly, but not before you watch this planet die. A waste of resources. A waste…”

Revan watched the Sith Lord die with an impassive face. Meetra looked out the viewport, the sky alight with laser fire. Squadrons of Sith starfighters were skirmishing with the mismatched ships of the rebels, although Meetra saw at least one Sith starfighter shoot down another.

A few weapons were pointed at them although Meetra had seen more conviction from underpaid, apathetic security guards in Nar Shaddaa. A Rodian communications operator was rocking under their console. “We’re going to die we’re going to die—“

“Drop your weapons,” Meetra said, her words weighted with authority. She was obeyed. “What were your orders?”

A tall human female found her tongue. “Activate the turbolasers and destroy the planet.”

“Tell them to stand down.” Revan extinguished his lightsabers and strode towards the comms hub.

Another comms officer wailed, “They won’t listen. They won’t.”

“Give the order. Now.” The command in Revan’s voice could not be ignored. The officers went to work, broadcasting it on every channel.

Meetra was studying the holoradar, counting dreadnoughts and cruisers. It was what they had expected. Revan caught her gaze and she nodded.

He came to stand behind her as outside the transparisteel, several turbolaser cannons began to glow red as they charged. “You can do this,” he said.

“I must.” They had no choice. They didn’t have any other options to stop the destruction of the city. Meetra closed her eyes, feeling the spark of life in each of them, then the people fighting in the rest of the capital ship, and when Revan rested his calloused hand over the nape of her neck, her consciousness spread out to include every life in orbit and the planet below. She shielded Revan from the maelstrom. Fear, courage, despair, hope, desperation, resolve, pain—

And always underneath and over it all, the echoes of screams.

Her ability was not battle meditation, which was precious, lauded. No one had trained Meetra in this, and Nihilus had been the dark mirror to show her why. Even with the best of intentions, her power to wield such insidious influence over others was rightly feared, but if it meant that she could prevent another Cathar or Serocco, then she had to try.

She was tangled in the web of life, thousands of lights interconnected by the Force, but she reached along every strand and asked them all to stand down. In the rush, she brushed a familiar consciousness and registered relief before she wrapped her mind around the planet again. She could make them stop killing each other in this war. She took the hostility, the fear, the anger, and let it all die with Malachor V.

Then, she was falling into Malachor V, streaking across the sky like a shooting star. She was burning as the first of the turbolasers fell. With every death, a scream. With every scream, an echo. She would be erased, emptied, nothing left of her but the hollow sound. They would kill her this time if she didn’t kill them—

Surik! Your move. Draw or hold?

Mee, can you pass me the solder laser?

Meetra was not sure which of them was the one who threw off the invader, but it was Revan who struck a blow against the unknown assailant, his rage blazing a white hot path between the stars. The searing light faded, leaving silence and darkness in its wake. She followed the sound of Revan calling her name, until she opened her eyes to the sight of his face tight with anxiety, framed by the ceiling of the command centre.

“Did—“ Her mouth tasted of the iron tang of blood.

He shifted her in his arms before he answered the question that she was about to ask. “They got off a round of turbolasers, but they’ve stopped. For now.”

“How long was I out?” She sat forward and Revan wiped at the trickle of blood coming from her nose with the edge of his sleeve. For a moment, she felt like the gravity generators had failed, but it passed, the room reorienting itself to ceiling above and floor beneath her.

“Seconds.” His voice was low and calm, but the glitter in his eyes was like the light catching the edge of a blade. She might not have been out for long or left with any lasting injury, but Revan was ready to kill for this. “We have what we need. It is time to end this. The emperor is waiting for us.”

Chapter 43: Binary Star

Chapter Text

The cogwheels of the propaganda machine had been turning ever since Revan and Meetra had started organising the rebellion, although they both took care to not call it that in front of the other rebels. They had needed to get their message out to as many systems as possible, and they had achieved that objective with their usual efficiency in order to drum up support and supplies, as well as divide the attentions of the Sith forces across the empire. Lisaam had proved to be a charismatic face for the rebellion. After Meetra had, ahem, enforced the ceasefire—Revan was on the receiving end of a blistering look when he used this exact phrase—Lisaam had broadcast a raw, powerful message on every channel with the help of some rebel slicers and T3. Revan and Meetra might have coached her on the words to use, but that wasn’t the point. Everyone stopped killing each other, for just long enough that the negotiations for a true truce could get underway. The fact that the planet’s surface was not a smoking crater meant that the Sith fleet had committed mutiny by default, which in turn made them rather more receptive to the rebels’ peace overtures.

The casualties of the attack had been minimal, although that still meant little to the families of the dead. Of the six prisoners who had been taken at the start of all of this, two were missing and presumed dead, and the other four had been released as a show of goodwill. The news of the Sith Lord’s defeat was spread along similar channels, and they were duly informed that the recently departed had the moniker of Mortis, which was so lacking in imagination to the point of being depressing. The Emperor’s chosen pseudonym among his minions had been lost to time, although it wasn’t of particular interest to them in any case.

They left the rebellion within hours of the Sith Lord’s death. Lisaam would miss them, but she had sufficient support and ultimately, this fight belonged to the people of the Empire. Their freedom was theirs to win, and then they could build the worlds that they wanted.

She touched those planets on the galaxy map before she traced the path of the blip that represented the Ebon Hawk. Still a ways to go. They had prepared all that they could for now. The variables involved for two Jedi and two droids were magnitudes smaller than accounting for an army, as small and ragtag as the rebels had been.

Revan entered the co*ckpit on soundless feet, coming to a stop a finger’s breadth behind her. “You never did enjoy the weight of command,” he observed.

She leaned back and he wrapped his arms around her, his skin still cool and damp from the refresher. “Do you?”

“No.” He kissed her temple. “Unless you’d like me to order you around a bit?”

“You can try.”

“I’m neither brave nor stupid enough.” A chuckle rumbled through his chest.

“Revan, on the flagship with the Sith Lord—“ she felt him stiffen, his arms tightening around her, a statement that anyone who sought to hurt her would have to get through him. “When I was reaching out, I felt Atton’s mind. He was somewhere in orbit.”

The murmur of Revan’s thoughts faded into silence before he answered. “You know what that implies.”

“I trust him. And there were many among that fleet who were not loyal to the Sith. And when the emperor attacked my mind, he was helping me shield myself.”

“Things have changed. All that I ask is for caution, should we encounter him again.” She didn’t need the Force bond to hear that Revan was both frustrated and unsurprised. He had fully expected the conversation to go this way.

He released her as she turned to face him. Despite making no promises, she bridged the narrow gap between them, cupping his jaw with both hands and opening her mind to him rather than turning away. He exhaled and relaxed into her touch, bringing his arms back around her, resting his forehead against hers.

“It’s in your nature to trust,” he said after several minutes, resigned that she would not yield on this, too tired to argue. “Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Get some sleep, Mee. I will shield your mind.”

*

“Are you gonna deal us in or what?”

Atton has a point. She’s holding the main deck for once. She spreads the cards across the central console in the Ebon Hawk’s co*ckpit, but when she looks at her side deck, she realises that her hand is terrible. There aren’t any flip cards at all—it’s just the base set straight out of the box.

Atton shoots her a sly grin from his usual seat in the pilot’s chair. “I always did give you all the best cards for your side deck, Surik.” He taps his fan of cards, and she recognises her side deck that he took with him. “Let’s see if you live up to your bragging, champion of Nar Shaddaa.”

Meetra is starting to clock on to what’s actually going on here. “So, where are you anyway? Must be boring if you’re thinking this hard about playing pazaak with me.”

He shrugs. “Wouldn’t call it that. Let’s just say that since I sobered up, I’ve been trying to find you, but you’ve been hiding your tracks well. I would have said that you’ve become a bit too good at this, but then, you’re as popular with the Sith as ever.”

“Why are you looking for me anyway?”

He quirks a half smile. “Your move, Surik.”

“Answer the question, Rand.” She draws a nine, bringing the total to twenty one. “Dammit.” All she has in her hand are plus cards.

He ignores the question and plays his hand instead, landing neatly on twenty with a whistle and a smug look. “Pure pazaak. Another round?”

The next few rounds end similarly, although Meetra’s pazaak deck is infinite, as is the console warping and stretching to accomodate the extra cards. Atton studies the numbers of the cards lying face up and nods to himself as he mouths the sequence. “Yeah. That must be it.”

“And you say that I’m cryptic. What is that?”

He shrugs and winks. “Just time for me to claim my prize. Wasn’t Republic Senate, nor Nar Shaddaa rules, but we were playing for…” He trails off with a smirk.

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Gambling without knowing the stakes? Risky.”

“Foolish,” he agrees, then he leans across and presses his mouth to hers in a chaste, close-lipped kiss. This part of the vision is real in the way that the rest isn’t. He smells like his jacket did, his stubble rough against her face, his lips warm and gentle. She doesn’t return the kiss, but she doesn’t draw away either. He draws back a little, studies her face. She doesn’t know what he sees, but there is something like regret in his gaze. “I could keep going but…maybe in another life.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time I flew into a system with a binary star?” She shakes her head, and he continues his story. “This would have been the first, maybe second year of the war, when I was still flying cargo runs. We popped out of hyperspace around Tatooine and—” He inhales, a look of wonder on his face before it fades to wistfulness. “Thought of that again, when I saw—so…yeah, well. Don’t be sorry.”

She understands his meaning. Reaches out and touches his face. “There’s an entire galaxy out there, waiting for you to see it.”

His lopsided grin starts to slip, and he catches the hand touching his face. “Maybe I have something better to do than sightseeing.” He releases her hand and stands, brushing past her to get to the co*ckpit door.

“Goodbye, Atton.” She can hear the finality in her own voice.

He pauses with his back to her, straightening his jacket over rigid shoulders. “See you on the other side, Meetra.” And then he is gone.

*

Revan was seated in meditation beside her when she woke up. The components of his lightsabers were levitating around him in a double halo, but as she sat up, they twirled and clicked into position in a well practiced assembly. He ignited the lightsabers briefly in a final check, then extinguished them and set them on the table before he sat beside her on the bunk.

Recognising the question in his eyes, she answered, “Atton. A farewell.”

“I see.” He didn’t press her for details.

“Revan, if I—“

“Don’t.” He was not going to say goodbye to her.

She put a gentle hand on his cheek, turning his face towards hers. “This may be the only time that we have left.” Her voice was so quiet that he could just make out her words over the thrum of ship’s engine.

And so it was. The lives of humans were tiny slivers of time in the history of the galaxy, an infinitesimal fraction of the lifetime of a star. Even so, the brief candles of their lives might be reduced further, amputated by the tip of a blade. If they survived, he was at the approximate halfway point of his natural years, and Meetra was just a little shy of that mark.

“If I die—don’t isolate yourself for fear of your ability.” His voice was even. She was right. There were things that needed to be said. “Don’t live in memory. Live in the present and for the future. Let yourself love and be loved.”

She blinked, trying fight back tears, always a Jedi denying her emotion. “Promise me the same.”

“You have a heart that’s better suited to love,” he said gently. He, on the other hand, had never loved anyone but her. “If you survive, I will have no regrets. I will be at peace, so find your joy.”

“Promise me, Revan.” She rested a hand over his heart. “You will do the same, if the tables are turned. You will not live out your days alone. You will forgive yourself.” She said it with the certainty of a prophet, making a future real by the telling of it, sketching a picture of the life that she thought would make him happy.

He would not lie to her, so he promised what he could. “I will try.”

“And so will I.” Their lips met, sealing these uncertain promises, saying more than they could with words.

And the truth was, he couldn’t see a future past the dark hall where Meetra would fall. Perhaps he would die to save her. Perhaps he would die trying. Perhaps his life held nothing afterwards. Perhaps their lives were truly joined, for they had ever orbited each other like binary stars, and the death of one spelled the end of the other.

But she was here, she was now, she was peace, she was clarity. She was under his fingers, his mouth, he was with her, in her, holding her close and safe as the wave crested and broke over her, which in turn drove him over the edge. He was heard, seen, held, known, loved, all of these things in her voice whispering his name, her body and her mind and her heart meeting his in a thousand secret ways.

This was passion. And from passion came rage and fear, and from there, he could see a path that he knew all too well.

More than that, this was love. He told her so, murmured it in her ear, said it against her lips, and engraved into his memory every time that she told him the same. Jolee Bindo had told him that love was salvation, not damnation. But that sometimes no matter how hard one tried, it was not meant to be. That he had to know when to fight for it, and when to accept that it was time to part ways.

Attachment.

The Sith would have called it chains.

A bond. Their bond.

As he drifted off to sleep with Meetra reading quietly beside him, the dim glow of the datapad illuminating her lovely face, he asked himself yet again: how far would he go?

*

Meetra was quiet as she prepared herself for the battle. She braided some her hair to keep it out of her face then gathered it all into a knot, rather than pulling it back into her usual simple nerftail. Dressed in her tunic, which was a rumpled fabric the colour of mist, and wore it over her usual leggings and boots. Revan was already in his breastplate. He had lugged it across the galaxy, so he figured that now was as good a time as any to wear it. They were staring death in the face, and that usually invited some degree of reflection on one’s life.

They had lived as Jedi. For a given quantity, of course. Discounting five years as the Dark Lord of the Sith and ten years as an exile.

If they fell fighting this war, they would die as Jedi. Might as well look the part.

When it came down to it, strip away the trappings, the temples, the lightsabers, the discipline, the dogma, the politics, the philosophical debates, and all that was left was someone who wanted to help. Someone who would help a farmer on Dantooine as readily as a senator on Coruscant. Someone who could see the cost to themselves, and who would pay that price.

They were both in the co*ckpit as the Ebon Hawk warped out of hyperspace, bringing the dark heart of the Sith empire into view, a sphere of a planet like any other from this distance, but the sight sent a surge of adrenaline through both of them.

“Jolee said something to me once: this is just one more struggle of light against the dark. Things will still come around eventually. But if we succeed here, we will kick start the process by years. I’m paraphrasing, if you couldn’t tell.”

“So, no pressure, right?” Meetra’s chuckle sounded resigned. He knew that she was thinking of an empire—and emperor—that had already lasted a millennia.

“A blink in the lifetime of a star.” All that anyone truly had was time, and not much of it. “No matter what happens here, the stars will still burn, planets will spin along their orbits, and people will continue to live their lives on thousands of worlds.”

Meetra’s face was thoughtful in the dim light of the data feeds, then she nodded and said, “Emotion, yet peace.” It was the version of the code that they had learned as younglings, before they had ever met one another, before they knew what it meant to live by that creed.

He continued it for her. “Ignorance, yet knowledge.” The Ebon Hawk was equipped with the best planetary scanner that money could buy in the Republic, and the incoming data seemed to correlate with what they’d been told. They were about to find out how accurate it all was. T3 would send as much verified data as possible to the rebellion, in case they fell here today.

“Passion, yet serenity.” She extended her hand and he took it. It was time. They were ready.

“Chaos, yet harmony.” In a lifetime marked by war, he could finally see an end to it.

Her dark eyes caught his gaze as she waited. He still could not bring himself to say those final words, so she finished it for him. “Death, yet the Force.”

Revan blinked, then swallowed, understanding her meaning even if he did not wish to. As the hull began to glow with the heat of atmospheric entry, he echoed her words. “Death, yet the Force.”

Chapter 44: Rise

Chapter Text

The approach to the Sith emperor’s capital by ship had been completely free of any opposition, presumably because whatever the emperor wanted with them could not be achieved if they ended up dying in a flaming wreck. As soon as their boots hit the ground however, it was apparent that the emperor hadn’t ruled for a millennia—as claimed by his recently deceased underling—by offering his enemies a duel at their full strength.

The Sith throwing themselves at Meetra and Revan were skilled fighters. These must have been the elite guard—devoted to violence rather than the more subtle politicking required to rise in the imperial hierarchy. Most fought with lightsabers, and were far more competent than Lisaam and the others who had been on her home world. There was the odd poisoned blade, some stun batons and tranquilliser darts aimed at Meetra, but a notable lack of explosives and ranged weapons. While it was handy to note the Sith’s traditionalist weapons education, Meetra and Revan didn’t have the space to exploit that, apart from throwing the odd grenade with a targeting lock.

They made it to the throne room intact but for a few burns and scratches. Revan threw open the blast doors with an impatient flick of his hand then froze. His gloves creaked as his fingers tightened around his lightsaber hilts. It was the black hall of his vision.

Meetra stepped over the threshold, back straight and head held high. She turned back to look at him, and there was no hesitation in her dark eyes. She would do this, with or without him.

Revan followed her through and they left the doors open behind them, a scorched trail strewn with corpses marking their passage. A large staircase met them, leading them upwards into a cavernous hall. It seemed deserted as they strode onwards, but the emperor’s presence would have been palpable to any living thing. He felt like the smell of decay that bred no new life, the vicious grip of a clawed hand around a throat before it drew blood, the death of the universe as it fell into a cold silence.

He felt Meetra’s mental nudge, and shared her awareness that there were shapes trailing them from a distance, peeling away from the deeper shadows behind the great pillars. What little light there was came from sputtering lamps set along the stairs. The Force interacted with electricity in strange ways at times, but it took substantial strength in the Force to create the smallest spark of lightning, and likely exponentially more to be able to affect electricity with no active effort. Revan had expected no less.

The Sith emperor was waiting with his rump firmly planted upon a throne that was made of polished black stone like the rest of the hall. He was humanoid in size, probably somewhere between Malak and Revan in height and build, and looked like a species that they recognised from the statues of Korriban but had seen nowhere else. Some of those stone-hewn details had been lost to erosion, but the resemblance was clear enough.

The emperor tilted his head, examining them with some interest. “Ah, here you are. I have been observing your progress, little insects. That assassin, what was his name again? He was right, you are very good at hiding. But Jedi can’t help but meddle. It’s been a very long time since I had the pleasure of such amusem*nt. Come closer, let me look at you.”

Both Meetra and Revan didn’t take their eyes off the emperor. They didn’t need a signal to coordinate their approach, and they would not need a signal to attack. The emperor wanted to play games. They would let the Sith speak. Time would tick on as he wasted words.

The emperor leaned forward in his throne, looking first at Revan. “A bonded pair. So much for the Jedi disdain for attachment. Curious, when one has seen how this little story could have played out so differently. I’ve seen the future along your branching paths. You might have achieved something apart from dying here in a futile effort to redeem yourself. With your other woman, you could have sired a line of Force-sensitives that would have changed the galaxy as they walked the skies in millennia to come.”

Revan supposed that the Sith meant Bastila. The attempt to rattle Revan’s conviction was so far off the mark as to barely be in the same space-time continuum, so his reply was brief and to the point. “We shall see who dies today.”

The emperor laughed. “In all these years, the Jedi have not lost their arrogance, even when they are on the precipice of extinction.” He angled his obsidian gaze towards Meetra. “Ah, you are the one who turned my fleet against me. Even now, I can feel your pull, the strength of your influence. You are a black hole that will consume all that it touches. And in the void, all that remains is the echo of millions of screams. What did it take to create such an exquisite wound? I will enjoy finding out. After that, well…you’re too dangerous to leave alive, even if you are a pretty little thing.”

Revan’s teeth clamped together, but the emperor caught an flash of his emotion when no one apart from Meetra should have been able to. They were in the seat of the emperor’s power. Centuries of atrocities tainted this place, and even if the Sith could not breach Revan’s mental walls, glimmers of intense feelings were seeping through.

“Of course. The Jedi teach you to be so careless of yourselves, but to exist to protect others. And who better to protect than a bond mate? A…lover?” The emperor’s smile stretched wider in a mirthless gash.

Meetra ran her thumb over the ridged grip of her lightsaber and Revan did the same with his, as if they were brushing each other’s skin. They had lived through too much to allow a Sith’s crude taunts to incite them to rage. They could infer a few things, even if it was not exactly clear to Revan from whom each thought emerged, or whether it was born from the liminal space between them. The emperor recognised Revan as a threat, and was trying to bait him for that precise reason. Meetra’s nature as a wound in the Force was a curiosity and the Sith would happily destroy Meetra to investigate the phenomenon and to eliminate any potential danger from that unknown quantity. With the corruption in this place, they would have to guard their emotions, lest they succumb to its influence.

The emperor was trying to gauge their reactions, probing their mental defences, but they gave him nothing but the sound of the wind over the grass plains of Dantooine, rich with the smell of the coming rain. He gripped the armrests of his throne. “Dream of your distant planets all you want. Can you even still hear the Force, wounded one? Then you will see the light flicker and die. In this empire which will soon encompass the galaxy, the Force is mine to command.”

“If you believe that the Force will be hoarded in your hands, that the fate of the galaxy is yours to dictate, you are wrong.” Revan felt the Force surge within him, flaring like the incandescent heart of a star. Even in this dark place, it would not be denied.

“This galaxy is mine,” the emperor replied, and his words were cold. “I am power. What are you? Two foundlings, cast out by your own families, raised by a gaggle of pacifist fools. You are nothing. You were born from nothing. You come from nothing. You will die for nothing. And when I am done with you, I will find and destroy every last Jedi in the galaxy.”

“The Force is with every living thing,” Meetra said in a quiet voice. “The Force belongs to us all. We are born from nothing, come from nothing, and still we will rise, because the Force is with us.”

The emperor stood, his black robes flaring out behind him. “Enough meaningless platitudes, Jedi. It is time to end this.” With a snap and hiss, his double bladed lightsaber ignited, bathing him in bloody light. Meetra and Revan were both already in motion, and with that, the battle at the end of all things began.

Chapter 45: A Choice Made

Chapter Text

The shapes in the darkness of the throne room turned out to be a mix of Sith sentients and beasts, some warped and twisted beyond recognition. They proved to be partially resistant to Force powers beyond being thrown or pulled, so Revan and Meetra concentrated on bolstering their own strength. The emperor seemed to have some command over the sentients and creatures alike, and they were focused on isolating Revan and Meetra, pushing between them heedless of the cost. It was a good tactic, if difficult to implement. They were still faster than most of their foes, and didn’t allow themselves to get pinned down.

The emperor darted in and out of combat, and it was clear that he was just testing their defences when an opening presented itself. His blades flashed with the speed and ferocity of a marauder, then he called on the storm of his hatred, sending bolts of lightning arcing towards them. Meetra was his main target, while the greater part of the swarm cleaved towards Revan.

They were not going to win by attrition. But an army of two Jedi and two droids never had that as a viable strategy.

The grenade landed with a metallic thump. Meetra and Revan vaulted out of the way. Before his feet touched the ground, Revan seized it with the Force, preventing the emperor from deflecting it.

Chemicals like this had been used during the war: combustible, corrosive, toxic, or some horrible combination of all these things. Revan had timed it well enough that the emperor was splattered with an adhesive gel over one side of his body when it exploded.

The emperor laughed with true amusem*nt. “Such a crude and ineffective tool.” He extended one hand, reached for the spark of his hatred, then burst into flame.

It was a deliberate choice to counter a Sith who could create electricity. Another grenade landed by the emperor, who retained enough presence of mind to knock it away despite the flames licking at half his body. It exploded in a cloud of gas that made the organics around it drop, limbs twitching.

The emperor strode out through the gas, and this time there was a mad gleam in his smile. He opened his mouth, then twitched his head sideways, avoiding the disruptor bolt. “What was that? Have the Jedi descended to such cheap tricks?”

“Condescending correction: such tactics were first utilised during the Jedi Civil War against the Jedi.” Red photoreceptors glowed in the haze as the gas from the grenade slowly dissipated.

“Droids?” This time the emperor sounded incredulous. “What kind of Jedi use droids?”

HK-47 did not reply, instead sighting down his target reticule instead and firing. The Sith emperor moved towards the droid, a shadow in flight at a speed that was barely subsonic. Meetra shoved HK to safety before he could be bisected, moving him with practiced precision. The red double blades scythed through empty air and the emperor landed with enough force to crack the stone.

Revan and Meetra had both observed that the Sith Empire had come to a technological standstill. The Republic, on the other hand, still contained companies like Czerka, which took perfectly innocuous technological advances like biometric scanners and put them into mines. With the infinite patience of a droid, T3-M4 had reprogrammed the hostile/ally identification parameters of every single mine that Meetra and her team had salvaged in the course of defeating the Sith Triumvirate. And of course, droids were just dead spaces in the Force to the emperor, just the same as they were to most Jedi. While the Force-users had been preoccupied, HK had been guarding T3 as the latter laid mines with optimised speed, the majority of his processing power diverted to this task.

The emperor didn’t know any of this when he slammed into the ground, detonating seven mines around him.

Meetra sensed the emperor drawing on the Force, draining the life from the closest creatures to sustain his injured body. She was the next target of this, but being an unsatisfying snack was just about the only perk of being a wound in the Force. Revan may have been strong enough to shrug off the attempt, but Meetra wasn’t about to risk finding out—bound to him as closely as she was, she shielded him from that same attack with ease. When the emperor emerged from the smoke, Revan charged the emperor in a blur of speed and their lightsabers clashed as the true duel began.

“Phase four, T3!” Meetra called.

T3-M4 was not designed for climbing stairs at speed in either direction, so he was reduced to a sort of hop between alternately extending and retracting his front legs and rear wheels. Before the beasts took a bite out of him, Meetra blasted everyone in their immediate vicinity clear, buying herself enough time to lift T3 down to the throne room’s entrance. The little droid beeped before he whirred off at speed. T3 was better armed and armoured than some crime lords thanks to her continuous upgrades and Revan’s latest tweaks, so Meetra turned her attention back to the fight.

HK was picking off anyone and anything trying to flank Revan, until the emperor leapt back towards his throne, sending his thralls to swarm Revan, threatening to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. With Revan pinned down, the emperor sent an arc of lightning towards him that Meetra blocked with a large piece of rubble, then she reached for the enemies around Revan, pulling at the Force in them to slow their limbs for just long enough that he could get clear.

As they carved a path through the horde to one another, there was the sound of HK’s disruptor rifle firing, once, twice, thrice. Before they could disengage from the blades and claws around them, the Sith emperor launched himself towards HK. The droid’s energy shield bought him just a second before he was cleaved in half.

HK’s photoreceptors were still alight, but the lightsaber spun back towards him on its downstroke. HK caught the blade with one hand. It held for the moment with his emergency shields, even as molten metal dripped onto the remnant of his main chassis. “Proud statement: I am honoured to have served Masters Revan and Surik.” The assassin droid’s other hand clamped around the emperor’s ankle. “Confirmation: target locked and self-destruct sequence initiated. Proton core at critical levels.”

Revan and Meetra threw themselves clear, scrambling into cover behind a pillar. There was a flash of lightning and—

The world roared into flame. HK-47’s proton core had a high capacity by droid standards, but the main damage was caused by the chain explosions of the remaining mines laid by T3, the succession of smaller blasts like a gun salute for HK.

Their personal shields and Meetra’s hasty barrier took the brunt of the explosions. Small pieces of flying debris twanged off Revan’s breastplate and vambraces as he huddled over her, some rubble finding unprotected gaps and drawing blood. Meetra fought back nausea as she grappled with their perforated eardrums, trying to perform a delicate task under pressure. Within moments, the deafening whine in their ears began to subside. Instead the crackle and pop of flame and warping metal began filter back in, followed by the lower sounds of dying moans from the organics caught in the blasts.

Revan had already uncurled himself from around her as soon as the flare of the last explosion faded, scanning the area with every sense. There wasn’t time to grieve for HK’s sacrifice. They slowed their breathing, the air still thick with the smoke and the residue of gas mines. The noxious gases were gradually diffusing out through collapsed sections of the walls and ceiling, but it would be several minutes before they would be able to breathe without burning their airways. Keeping close, they trod carefully amidst the rubble and corpses.

The emperor’s malignant presence was still heavy in the air, but finding him was easier said than done. He blotted out the glimmering threads of the Force that joined living creatures. It was like swimming through lightless waters, grasping for an obsidian blade. In the glow of Meetra’s lightsabers, the smoke shifted and parted, revealing the emperor, who lifted a single hand.

She felt the pressure close over her throat, like a tractor beam looped around her neck and dragging her up to hang with the Force as her gallows. She couldn’t catch her breath to concentrate and break free as her vision went dark. Revan was calling her name, but the world shrank to the weak sound of her wheezing attempts to breathe, then she slipped into darkness.

*

This was the moment that he had feared.

Revan barely noticed himself moving, his perception narrowed to the only things that mattered: the emperor striding towards Meetra, one half of his double bladed lightsaber humming to life, all of it happening with an agonising slowness in this state of heightened consciousness.

The emperor’s attention was fixed on Meetra, his free hand reaching out to caress her face. Revan sucked in a breath, fighting back a coughing fit. She was somehow still shielding him from her suffering, but he could still feel the ghost of a noose around his neck. With the air in his lungs, he had enough oxygen to do one thing. Meetra’s heartbeat had been fluttering like that of a dying bird, but now it was slowing to an ominous crawl.

I will not let you die.

Death, yet the Force.

He had promised her.

He could try to break the chokehold that emperor had around her throat, or he could strike down the emperor while the Sith was distracted. It was his chance to end this. But if he failed, the Sith would kill Meetra.

Success.

Failure.

Death.

Life.

The Force.

The dark side swirled around him, a vortex of power that he could draw on if he wanted the strength to change the future—

Revan raised his lightsabers, heat pooling in the corners of his eyes, and he made his choice.

Chapter 46: Underhanded Trick

Chapter Text

“Interesting,” the emperor observes. “Even on the brink of death, you remain defiant, although I doubt that this strength is yours. But I will have my answers. How did you become a wound in the Force, little Jedi? How do you use the Force despite that?”

She is on her knees, his fingers around her throat, and he squeezes steadily. She gets one foot up, then the other so that she is in a half crouch, then pushes off with the last of her strength.

She lands flat on her back, gulping in desperate breaths and coughing. The air tastes like dust.

“Get up, Meetra.”

When her vision swims into focus, Kavar is holding a hand out to her. “Get up,” he repeats. “You can do this. I know you can.”

He dimples a smile when she takes his hand and he pulls her up. They are in the middle of the sparring circle in Dantooine, and it is a warm afternoon. Master Vandar and Master Vrook are standing together at the edge of the circle with her first master.

Her first master sounds the way she did before illness robbed her first of her strength, then her life, and she still looks hale and whole. “You worked so hard to be the best that you could be.”

Master Vandar nods. “Your path has led you to this crucial moment.”

“Bah. You’ve proved me wrong once.” Master Vrook folds his arms, looking disgruntled by her track record at killing Sith Lords. “Prove me wrong again.”

“You have always had the courage to fight, then and now.” Meetra turns to see Atris, as she was in Coruscant on that last day.

Alek is already wearing the trappings of war. “Will you sacrifice it all again for him?”

Mical steps forward, opening a door behind him. “Take strength in your connections to others. You carry the hopes of all life.”

She walks through the door, and Brianna points the way down a flight of stairs made of ice, although she can see a grimy Nar Shaddaa alley at the end of it. “You told me of the absence of the Force. Tell me now of its presence.”

Bao-Dur presses a solder laser into her palm. “Your command echoes still, general, and I obey. I am not the only one who will listen.”

Mandalore scoffs. “She fights with Revan, and that one has never lost a war.”

“You should run,” Mira suggests. “Bounty may be off, but you’re short on time here.”

“At the end, he was just a man,” Visas says.

Kreia rises to her feet with difficulty from where she was kneeling in meditation, dressed in her black robes but still wearing the face of a weary old master. “Remember your truth, exile. The lesson that you taught yourself must never be forgotten.

Atton produces a pazaak card from somewhere, clamping it between two fingers. “Like I said, always keep something up your sleeve for emergencies,” he says in a jocular tone. “Now, hurry up. He’s waiting for you.”

The last door opens, and it’s Revan, opening the cupboard door. She now knows that it’s love in his eyes when he looks at her, every single time that they find each other again in this galaxy. “Meetra.” Her name has always sounded different in his mouth. “Shall we see what comes after the end of all things?”

She hands him the solder laser, then takes his hand.

*

Her eyes snapped open and she forced the emperor’s grip back just enough for her to suck in a breath.

The emperor’s regalia had been charred into his flesh, but his face was mostly unmarked by the fire. The arrogant expression dissolved into surprise, then he lunged sideways, twisting to parry a blow from behind. Instead of a lethal blow, Revan’s lightsabers bit deep into emperor’s flank and hip as the Sith screamed, pulling life from the creatures around him to prevent his leg from being amputated. Instead of slackening his grip, the emperor clenched one fist. Meetra pushed back against the skyrocketing pressure. Within seconds, her neck would snap and it would all be over. Revan’s tear-streaked face was grim as he threw his full strength into another blow aimed at the emperor’s chest, the tip searing into flesh before the emperor forced him back.

She felt the emperor’s concentration shift, almost imperceptibly. The red lightsaber whipped up, deflecting blaster bolts into the stone floor. Between that, the onslaught of Revan’s strikes and the emperor’s injury, Meetra managed to burst out of the emperor’s grasp. She pushed herself upright as Revan rolled to her side, then he hooked an arm around her waist and launched them clear. They landed in a graceless heap, but Revan found his feet quickly, getting her into cover behind a pile of rubble and corpses.

She was still fighting for breath through her bruised throat. Revan brushed trembling gloved fingers along the line of her neck, then sweet air rushed into her lungs, the last traces of the dissipating smoke and gas making her cough.

“Meetra,” he said, his voice ragged with emotion.

“Revan.” She didn’t need words to reassure him that he had made the right choice. That her life was not worth that of the galaxy. He cupped her cheek with his hand for an instant, then he sprang up, wary of further attack.

The emperor was deflecting a storm of blaster bolts now, trying to aim them back at a shooter who was darting between pillars, moving with Force-enhanced speed. The emperor looked a bit rusty if one was being generous in their assessment. Meetra suspected that no one had shot at him for centuries.

“Hey, schutta. You’re even worse at this than I am.” Atton fired another few rounds from his rifle, then slid into cover a few metres from them. He flashed Meetra a dangerous grin. “Thanks for the hyperspace coordinates, Surik.” For all his bluster, there was a deep relief that she was still alive.

The cards fell into place. Or rather, they had done so in the vision. That had to be a galactic first in giving interstellar directions. “Underhanded trick, Rand.” She let him sense her gratitude. Apologised again for dragging him into this.

Atton shrugged before he curled his lip into a sneer at Revan. “Told you that you’d need me to bail you out. Your boyfriend talks a big game, but he’s kriffing bad at protecting you.”

A large boulder came sailing towards Atton’s position. Atton rolled out of the way, but Revan held out a hand, arresting it in its trajectory, then flung it back towards the emperor. “You were saying?”

Atton snorted. “Schutta. Watch Surik’s back, and do a better job of it.”

Revan spared him a glance. “Atton. Thank you.”

“Save your thanks. Let’s just kill that bastard.” With that, Atton drew a bead on the limping emperor and started shooting again.

Chapter 47: One With

Chapter Text

There was no debate about the objective offensive strength of the dark side of the Force, but by the same token, it was also beyond question that that the light side of the Force was far superior where it came to healing wounds of body, mind and spirit. Revan’s lightsabers had seared through muscle and tendon, and no matter how strong someone was in the Force, they needed have to have intact structures in their legs in order to ambulate normally.

The emperor dragged his leg behind him, but his rage and pain were channeled into ferocious attacks intended to keep them at a distance. Pillars were pulled down, collapsing sections of the roof and the rubble was hurled at them, while the storm crackling around the emperor spat bolts at unpredictable intervals.

Atton had loaned Meetra his disruptor pistol, and they kept the emperor busy to create a breathing space while Revan studied his attacks and hurled the odd boulder in the emperor’s direction. They had no other ranged weapons. Even with one leg crippled, the Sith was using the Force to lift corpses and rubble alike as cover from their shots.

Meetra sensed Revan’s conclusion: they had to get back into melee range. She returned Atton’s pistol, then her lightsabers hummed to life, and Revan brought down the pillar closest to the emperor. He launched himself towards the emperor, Meetra following at a sprint, weaving around the falling rubble.

Their lightsabers clashed at speed, Revan and Meetra forcing the emperor back. Even though his double blades were occupied parrying their blows, he was managing to deflect Atton’s blaster bolts with Force, using sheer power to solve that particular problem. Despite that, Atton was remarkably accurate with his aim, the bond lending him knowledge of their movements as they danced in that deadly melee, the Force giving him speed to match their own. Meetra felt him swap his blaster rifle for his disruptor pistol, then he dropped to one knee, sighted through the reticle, stilled his breath, then squeezed the trigger. A disruptor bolt pierced the emperor’s arm and another grazed his temple. The Sith hurled Revan and Meetra away, both of them landing on their feet.

The emperor proved that just because he had lost some use of one leg, it didn’t mean that he was entirely immobile. Running was beyond him, but a single jump required but a moment’s concentration, and the Force itself still granted him unnatural speed. He landed next to Atton, who dove into a roll as he tried to pull out his lightsaber. It was too late.

Lightning burst from the emperor’s hand, earthing itself through Atton’s body. The pilot’s body arched, every muscle going into spasm. Meetra didn’t allow herself even an instant of indecision. She threw her offhand lightsaber, forcing the emperor to parry it. This bought Atton a moment’s reprieve, but he struggled to push himself off the floor, his limbs quaking and giving way.

The Sith watched Atton with amusem*nt, keeping Revan and Meetra at bay again with the storm of his hatred and waves of detritus propelled at them. “Who is this fool? A cut beneath you two, to say the least. But such a strange, squirming mind. Reciting numbers like a prayer—let’s see what it is that he hides.”

Atton cried out and slumped to the ground. “Get out…of my head.”

“But what do we have here?” The emperor sounded pleased. “Hatred. Rage. Passion. Rise, Jaq. You know what you are at your core. Liar. Torturer. Murderer.” The scoundrel stood, his usual smirk wiped from his face. The emperor let the rubble drop and the lightning die away, allowing Meetra and Revan to approach. Revan held up an arm to bar Meetra’s way, wary of the trap that was being set. “How did you feel, seeing them embrace one another? Kiss? Did you see them rutting like animals in heat? Here is your chance to kill your enemy, and claim what should have been yours. What was stolen from you.”

Meetra sensed leaden despair glow like the heart of a falling meteor. Atton turned his gaze to Revan’s face, hazel eyes holding all the warmth of carbonite. She knew in her bones that Atton would never hurt her.

But what did that mean for Revan?

“Can’t say that I haven’t thought about it.” Atton slipped one hand inside his jacket, then produced his lightsaber hilt. His shoulders heaved and there was something ugly in his expression as he stared at Revan, his thoughts impenetrable, as if they were lost beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

Beside her, Revan shifted his weight, bracing for an attack. She stepped past him, resting her hand on his as he adjusted his grip on his lightsaber hilt. All of Revan’s years of battle training and experience was screaming at him to strike Atton first and take the advantage. Someone with Atton’s training could kill with a single move. The moment seemed balanced on the edge of a blade, but then Meetra realised that it was Revan’s doubt bleeding through the bond.

This was Atton.

She sent the thought to Revan in a whisper. Trust him. Trust me.

Revan’s instincts had kept him alive through decades of war. She was asking him to trust her judgement over his, and his life hung in the balance. His fingers tightened around his hilts, then he drew a slow breath, his posture shifting subtly as he turned his attention back to the emperor, their true enemy.

Atton’s gaze flicked to Meetra. She sucked in a breath that was almost a sob as she saw what was coming.

The Echani had a move for turning an opponent and striking them in the flank. Atton had not forgotten his training, and he performed the manoeuvre with a Jedi’s speed. His lightsaber ignited and Atton drove the golden blade through the emperor’s side. The Sith’s reaction was reflexive. Red light flashed.

Atton crumpled to the ground, but before the emperor’s lightsaber spun back towards Atton, Meetra blasted the emperor away with enough force to crash a starship in full flight. Revan charged towards the Sith, who had managed to slow his landing enough to avoid major injury, then lightsabers clashed. She wasn’t quite sure how she got to Atton’s side, but she fell to her knees beside him. Revan would keep the emperor away from them.

Atton’s breath hitched when she lifted his head, gently cradling him against her. She slipped her hand under his jacket and shirt, over the awful wound left by the emperor’s lightsaber, spanning the width of his waist, and she willed muscle, bone, bowel, nerve, blood vessel, diaphragm, lung and all manner of tissue to knit together.

“Your eyes…that bad, huh?” He fumbled for her hand, folding his fingers around hers and drawing it away from his wound. “Don’t. Save your…strength. Better this way.”

“Atton,” she said, and she pressed her forehead to his.

“S’okay. Was tired of living anyway. Too much death.” He brushed his thumb over her fingers in clumsy movements. “Lied to you. Let you down.”

“You’ve never let me down. You saved me, so many times between here and Peragus.” Her voice was thick with tears.

He smiled faintly. “It’s not done yet. Finish this. You gotta survive. Live. Now, go. Don’t want to die…in front of you. Can’t bear it.” He couldn’t get out more than a few words at a time, and each one was costing him.

She placed her hand over his heartbeat, his fingers threaded through hers. “Save me a place at the pazaak table.”

Then she showed him every memory she had of him. The incredulous look on his face as she walked into the Peragus prison in her underwear. How he dragged his hand through his hair when he was annoyed. The way he winked at her when he managed to return the favour to the other crew. The strength of her emotion every time he put himself in harm’s way for her. The awe and love in his eyes that she pretended not to notice. The hundred different ways that he laughed. The glow of the light in him when he meditated, the tides of their breath synchronising. Hours of pazaak in the co*ckpit, his feet up on the console, snatching cards from one another in a place that she would always return to. A thousand more moments that they had shared. Tears spilled from hazel eyes, but she felt him finally release a burden that he had carried since the first time he had killed out of love.

“There is no death, there is the Force.” She held him close as his breaths slowed and gurgled, then finally stopped.

He was no more substantial than a photon. He was weightless. He was free.

He was one with the Force.

Chapter 48: At the End of All Things

Chapter Text

Revan paced himself while the emperor rode a wave of rage. His own objectives were clear. Keep the emperor away from Meetra and Atton. Strike where he could. The Sith’s strokes were wild, but fast and strong. Revan parried each one with precision and control. The emperor was hobbled by his injuries, but with every passing moment, he was becoming more adept at using the Force to compensate for it. In this place, the limits of the Sith’s power were difficult to estimate. He should have been dead many times over. But they had wounded the emperor and brought him closer to death than any other had ever accomplished.

“You have already lost,” Revan informed the emperor, keeping his voice neutral, perfectly calm. “You are fallible. Mortal. You know this, even if you have tried to forget it for so many years.”

The emperor sent a bolt of lightning towards Revan that he evaded with a roll. “I still live despite your best efforts. I am eternal. Before me, you are an insect, and I will see your short life end in agony.”

Revan felt the groundswell of Meetra’s grief. The Force was swirling around her, the tides and currents guiding her to the core of light in every living creature. He saw himself as she saw him, burning with the incandescence of a quasar, while the emperor had a dread luminance like the devouring blaze of a wildfire. And from the three of them, the ties that bind all living creatures led to Lisaam and the rebels, to the other Sith, and all the way back to the Republic, and from each of those people, the threads of light led her on to the next. The Force sensitives were the brightest, even the Sith glowing like embers on a scorched battlefield. Revan felt her drawing on his strength and he gave it to her freely, sending the echo of her grief right to the edges of the galaxy. She gave them all that she held within her—the deaths of millions, but also the echoes of joy and love and hope, and the ripples of it all. She gave them the consequence of every life cut short. She gave them the belief that things could be different and that wars would end. That they would find their peace. It was up to them now: every soul in the galaxy who heard the echo.

“The eternal empire will fall. You have lost the war of ideas. They will suffer no more injustice. No more violence as an end unto itself.” They were past the end game now, in a future that had yet to be written. Atton was the wild card who had bought them this chance, paying the ultimate price for it. They were not so different after all. Revan had once wanted Meetra to know that she had the strength to achieve victory at any cost. Atton had given his life. Meetra would done the same. Revan would have sacrificed his too without question, but there was one life that he valued over all else, and yet he had chosen the galaxy over Meetra. But now, it was one and the same. For the galaxy. For Meetra.

“All that she has done is weaken their resolve to fight. My armies will crush any who were weak enough to listen to her.” The emperor would not have achieved his position without some degree of rabid conviction, although it would have been tempered by malicious cunning.

The Jedi had taught Revan to shun attachment—it was Meetra who taught him how to transcend it. She taught him that their bond of love was irreplaceable, but that death was not the end, and that love can live even in loss. That the lives and loves of all sentients were worth no less than she was. The emperor clung to his life with such desperation because he feared death, and he would never break these shackles of his own making.

“I pity you,” Revan said between blows. “No one will come to your aid. You lived a lonely existence, consumed by your desire for power, and now you will die alone.”

The emperor bared his teeth. “I will find more slaves. They were replaceable. There is no life worth more than mine.”

“Never again,” Meetra said, her voice low and steady as she stood, reclaiming her fallen offhand hilt after she buckled Atton’s pistol holster around her hips. “You will take no more lives.”

She joined the melee with a main hand thrust followed by an offhand reverse slash. During the Mandalorian Wars, Revan had felt that he and Meetra together would be unstoppable. This final fight proved that to be the truth. The emperor pulled more lightsabers from the fallen, using his impressive focus to make those lightsabers duel as well as any Sith or Jedi, but such tactics were not a surprise given that Meetra had already seen Darth Traya do the same. They fought as a single unit, destroying the extra lightsabers, then inflicting small wounds on the emperor as he struggled to keep up against both of them. When he saw the chance, Revan cleaved through the emperor’s double hilt and Meetra followed up with a blow that caught the emperor’s shoulder.

The emperor knocked them away with the force of a hurricane’s winds, buying himself a moment to take stock of his injuries and his weapon. One red blade still burned steadily, but the other flamed into life for just a moment before sputtering out—the emitter must have been damaged. The Sith did not have the luxury of using only one blade when he was fighting against two dual wielders, so he instead opted to blast them with a storm, keeping them at bay again, then he slammed a fist onto the ground, a crevasse thundering open between Meetra and Revan.

The blow destabilised whatever lay beneath the throne room. They were forced apart, both scrambling to find stable ground. The emperor leapt towards Revan, landing with a grunt, then lightsabers flashed again as they fought, both stumbling as the ground shook and the building continued to fold inwards. Meetra was trying to find a path towards them, but was forced to evade falling rubble, and she had to take a circuitous route as more of the floor between them collapsed. Revan took the offensive this time, attacking the emperor’s injured side. He caught the emperor’s lightsaber between his, and tried to disarm the emperor. It would have worked. Should have. Maybe it was fatigue, his old injuries, his age—

The ghost of pain struck him from every angle, and Revan twisted away from the blade lock by extinguishing one lightsaber briefly, then had to parry and deflect a hailstorm of weapons and rubble. The emperor tipped forward, losing his balance from the sudden lack of resistance. Revan retained enough presence of mind to kick the emperor in the back of his leg to help him on his way down, in a modified inversion of what Meetra had improvised all those years ago before they had gone to war, although this time he did it with enough force to shatter bone. But the Sith’s damaged half hilt was spinning towards Revan, timed to perfection and concealed as a threat too small to register amidst the otherwise fatal onslaught. The lightsaber ignited for just long enough to slide down his bracer and carve cleanly through Revan’s right arm.

The pain screamed through Revan, burning starfire lines between his arm and the crown of his head. Somewhere, he felt Meetra drop to her knees, then a cool numbness surged from the tip of the stump of his arm, dulling the pain enough for him to stagger to his feet. He pulled his main hand lightsaber towards him and holstered it before the emperor could use his own weapon against him. The emperor pushed himself upright, his own face a rictus of pain as well. There was nothing else left alive in the capital for him to drain to heal himself.

Revan watched the emperor, his thumb resting on the switch of his violet offhand lightsaber. Pain still lanced through the stump of his other arm if he moved too quickly despite Meetra’s concerted efforts, so he kept it close to his body. The battle’s end was near. The periphery of his vision pulsed black as exhaustion closed in around him. But he had one last thing to do.

No—

Not just one thing.

There was a future now, so close to coalescing into reality. One that felt like Meetra’s cheek under his hand, and looked like a thousand skies for them to walk under, and sounded like the hum of tools in a gearhead’s workshop.

This would not be the end of all things.

There had been a rhythm to the Sith’s attacks. Lightsaber strikes, throws, lightning, blocks with rubble, evading. His options had narrowed as the battle continued. Revan’s gaze flicked to HK’s arm lying among the detritus, which had been partially melted and hacked off his main chassis before the droid had completed the self-destruct protocols. As the emperor blurred into motion, trying to catch him off guard, Revan hurled the arm at the emperor, catching him on the leg just as lightning erupted from the Sith’s fingers again.

An electric current had a magnitude inversely proportionate to the resistance of the conductor. HK’s arm was not a perfect conductor, but it was far better than air and quite adequate as a lightning rod. The greater part of the electric current looped back around to the emperor, who collapsed with every muscle locked in agonised contraction.

This time, Revan struck true.

The shadows shifted on the emperor’s face as Revan extinguished the violet blade. He sank to his knees, breathing hard as pain crackled up his arm again. The emperor’s body slumped to the ground beside Revan, and the Force in the Sith’s physical shell unravelled, everything that he had stolen over centuries returning to the greater stream of life. The corpse shrivelled, death overdue by a millennia finally overtaking it, until there was nothing left but a desiccated husk with a scorched cavity where its heart should have been.

Meetra closed the distance between them with great bounds, then kneeled beside him. Her fingers fluttered towards him, as if she was afraid that he would shatter if touched, then her hand brushed the angle of his jaw as gently as a breath of wind just stirring a blade of grass. He encircled her with his intact arm. Both of them were trembling, pushed beyond every limit that they had ever known.

“It’s over,” he said. Meetra was alive. She was safe.

She nodded against his shoulder. “It’s over,” she echoed, as if they both needed to hear and to say it for it to be real. She drew in a ragged breath, then hot tears soaked his robe and shirt and she whispered, “Atton.”

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t notice his own tears until she reached up to wipe his cheeks with her sleeve. She held out a hand, cupping it over his stump when he gingerly extended it to her, then she sent the Force pouring into it like cool water over a burn. Her tears cut tracks through the dirt and soot staining her face, pale in the early morning light.

He held her close, at the break of a new dawn, and he wept.

Chapter 49: Stories

Chapter Text

“Papa, there’s a man looking for you.”

Mical set aside the budget reports. Despite his fatigue, he had to smile at his daughter bouncing into his office and tugging at his hand. “Come on, papa! He said that he had something important for you.”

“Where is he?” Mical allowed himself to be dragged along the empty corridors. Classes were in session, and they had but a handful of knights to train the new younglings and apprentices.

“Here!”

The stranger was standing in a small reception room near the temple’s entrance. There was something familiar about him, an aura of power—but Mical’s mind slid off the thought. The other man was well into his middle years, but had the bearing of a warrior under his spacer’s garb. Mical could tell by the way his eyes creased that this was a man who smiled freely and meant every single one. He was wearing gloves, and Mical noticed the stiff movement of the fingers of his right hand as the older man turned to face him. Many bore such wounds after the war, and not all were lucky enough to have prostheses.

“Go on, Yuli.” Mical laid a hand on her blonde head and she pulled away with a squeak. She was in a phase of wanting to be treated like a grown up. “Shouldn’t you be in class?”

A look of guilt, then defiance crossed Yuli’s face. “No.” The tone of the syllable swept up and down the registers in an attempt to sound convincing.

“You know that Master Marr takes attendance for every session, right? And that she can see through walls?” Mical raised his eyebrows at his daughter. Yuli’s grey eyes widened, then she scampered off without another word.

The stranger chuckled. “She has her mother’s eyes.”

It was a strange comment, but Mical had dealt with the full array of sentient personalities in the course of performing his role, so he was unfazed. “She shares my wife’s beauty. I bid you welcome to the Jedi temple.” He essayed a polite bow.

The man returned it, as he would have to an equal, although most would have dipped lower in acknowledgement of Mical’s role. “I believe you are the Jedi Grandmaster?”

“I am. You have me at a disadvantage—and you are?”

“Ah, I am just a messenger.” The stranger drew a lightsaber hilt from his pack. “I was asked to return this to the Jedi.”

“This is…Atton’s lightsaber.” Mical took it from him, and automatically flicked it on, the golden blade coming to life with a hum before he extinguished it. “How did you get this?”

“His companion charged me with returning it to you.”

“His companion? A woman?” At the other man’s nod, Mical continued the questioning. “Meetra Surik?”

“Yes, that’s her name.” The lines of the stranger’s face softened. “The man who wielded that lightsaber died to save her.”

“I felt it. We all did. But that was years ago. Where is Meetra now? Did they find Revan?” Mical had missed his master’s wisdom greatly over the years. There were still days when he wondered what she would have said about the latest disaster to cross his desk. She would have poked fun at some of those minuscule catastrophes, even as she helped and comforted the people involved. That thought made the drudgery of his harder days far easier to bear.

The other man shrugged. “All I can tell you is that she did what she set out to do.”

“Defeated the true Sith.” Mical drew in a breath.

“The Sith were dealt a blow that they will feel for years to come. What you felt when Atton died, they experienced a hundredfold, and suddenly their beliefs rang hollow to many of them. But they will turn up again like a bad credit.” The other man said it in a tone that wasn’t unkind. He was simply informing Mical of the facts as he saw them. “As long as the Jedi survive, eventually someone will disagree with your ideas enough that they will shed blood for it. But if you and I are lucky, it won’t be in our lifetimes, nor that of your child. And the Jedi would do well to prepare for that day to come.” He tipped his head, looking amused at the bemusem*nt in Mical’s face. “But what do I know? I’m just a simple droidhead. I will leave you to it, Grandmaster. Remember Atton Rand. That’s all that she asks.”

Before Mical could react or question him further, the man was gone, leaving through the temple’s main doors with long strides. The desire to follow him peaked and ebbed away within seconds, and instead Mical returned to his office, his thoughts of Atton’s sacrifice and of Meetra. The messenger was insignificant, already forgotten, and when Bastila questioned him later, he would struggle to recall anything of note about the man, and it seemed that the someone had forgotten to free up the security camera hard drives and all the recordings of the past month had been lost—just another minor error in the thousands of things that needed to be done in the running of the Order. Fortunately for Mical, his wife had learned to forgive him for such lapses.

*

Jolee settled himself on a stool in the empty droid workshop with a sigh, wondering how long he would have to wait. Bao-Dur was away working on the Telos restoration project again, and Jolee could think of only two other Jedi who were interested in this place. Both of them had been absent for years, causing no small amount of angst in the process.

He meditated as he waited. Here in densely populated Coruscant, the Force was a constant roar like open ocean beating against rocky cliffs rather than the susurrus of Kashyykk’s giant trees, but he noted the faint fluctuations regardless. When he was certain, he stood and made his way to the door, his hips and knees protesting their recent inactivity. The door stayed closed, so he had to open it himself and was faced with an empty corridor. He stepped out, looked down the hallway and saw a familiar astromech droid at the end, who chirped an excited greeting followed by a jumble of beeps.

“Hello there, T3. You’re going to have to wait for Bao-Dur to translate for you,” Jolee said. He squinted at the wall beside the droid, where an area that was about ten centimetres square intermittently shimmered like a slight heat haze if he concentrated. And beyond that was the faintest sound, just past the edge of hearing, an echo that stirred even his old, cynical heart. “Come in, kid. Take a seat. My knees aren’t what they used to be.”

The presence—if he could call it that, given that ghosts seemed to have more substance—didn’t move. T3 rocked back and forth, trilling something that seemed to be a question. Jolee cast a sidelong look over his shoulder as he turned to head back into the workshop. “I’ve lived long enough to know how to keep my mouth shut. So come on, don’t keep an old man waiting.”

The droid followed him in, and Jolee sank back onto the same stool, regretting the lack of armchairs. “You can stop hiding yourself, young lady. I might be getting deaf, but I can still hear the Force well enough, even if you and Revan seem rather good at muffling your presence.”

The surveillance camera in the corner of workshop swivelled to face the wall, then the figure of a woman slowly came into focus, as if she had always been there but he had just noticed her for some reason. “Master Bindo,” she said by way of greeting.

“Bah. Spare me the honourifics. We haven’t met before today, have we?” He squinted at her. “Or else I’m going senile. But I’ve heard a lot about you, Master Surik.”

The former Jedi exile was easily recognisable despite the passage of years and the fact that Jolee had only ever seen holos of her in the archives. He had missed his chance to meet her at the rebirth of the Jedi Order as he had been detained by helping Zaalbar with dealing with another Czerka operation on Kashyykk. She was dressed like a spacer, with a pistol holster on her hip, and he could still sense no more than a soft whisper of presence from her despite her proximity.

She said, “Let me guess. Detailed analysis about my disagreements with the nutrient dispenser and complaints about my lack of manners for not saying goodbye.”

The glib answer earned her a glare from under bushy eyebrows. “I can see how you and Revan would get on well. That boy couldn’t be bothered to say farewell before he left either, so I can’t say I expected any different this time. The lengths that some people will go to avoid small talk. Given how you’re sneaking around, I assume that neither of you plan on returning to the Order.”

She looked around the workshop to avoid his gaze, her eyes lingering on the hydrospanners. “Revan and I would rearrange the tools and make a mess in here, upsetting Bao-Dur to no end. Best that we just avoid stepping on anyone’s toes.”

It was a rather unsubtle allegory. Jolee huffed. “As far as excuses go, that was a rather thin one, young lady. The Order has changed for the better, if you ask me. Not that anyone cares for the opinion of one grumpy old coot.”

“It might reassure you to know that Revan starts a sentence with ‘Jolee once said—’ about once a week on average.” Meetra was failing to hide a grin.

The older Jedi’s voice was unexpectedly rough when he answered. “The boy was listening? Could have fooled me. How is he?”

“Alive, and living. Wounded, but whole.” There was something in her dark-eyed gaze that reminded Jolee of Revan’s intensity.

Under the dry sarcasm, Revan had been restless back then, a wounded creature pacing the cramped halls of the ship at all hours, his hands flexing into fists as if he was trying to grasp something and convince himself that it was more than a shadow without substance. In his rare moments of stillness, he had looked inward to some distant horizon of the mind. Reclaiming his name had been but the beginning of his journey to the truth.

“Then he found what he was looking for all those years ago,” Jolee observed

She tipped her head, nothing in her face but bland curiosity—Jolee wouldn’t have wanted to play pazaak against her. “What do you mean?”

“His memories, and you.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “It would be more accurate to say that I found him.”

“And both of you share a talent for splitting hairs when it suits you,” the old man grumbled. “Now don’t you go making bald jokes at me, lassie.”

“That’s more Revan’s style than mine. Fortunately for him, destiny hasn’t exacted retribution and he still has a good head of hair.” There was love in her voice as she spoke of the erstwhile Dark Lord of the Sith. “How did you know that I was here?”

Jolee waved a dismissive hand. “The new Council are too busy rushing about for them to notice small irregularities in the Force, now that you and the boy have learned to hide right under people’s noses. I, on the other hand, am too old to be chasing younglings about, so they let me doze around the temple. Where’s that Revan anyway?”

“Around. Trying to keep himself out of trouble, and not always succeeding.” There was both fond exasperation and an acknowledgement of complicity in her words. “An empire that has lasted a millennia dies a slow death. And while the senators here write endless reams of legislation, the Outer Regions still cares little for such things.” Meetra leaned forward. “If Revan was here, he would ask after Mission and Zaalbar.”

“They are well. Zaalbar is back on Kashyyyk leading his people. Mission is working for Carth as some sort of special operative. She still drops by every now and then to remind me how old I am.”

She paused before she asked her next question, already suspecting that the answer would be a difficult one. “I had no news of Juhani for Revan—“

“The conclave on Katarr.” Jolee exhaled. “And I need to tell you about Mira.“

“I know. I felt it.” Meetra’s voice was quiet. “What happened?”

“She covered the escape of a group of slaves. They got away. Found us, and told us of her sacrifice.”

“As Kreia said then.” Her gaze drifted into the past. “We lost HK-47 in that last battle. And…Atton.”

“I’m sorry.” It had been a comfort to her remaining Padawans that Atton had gone with her to the Unknown Regions—until they had all felt his death.

“As am I.” She drew a steadying breath then laid a hand on T3’s central processing unit. “I have to go. He’ll be waiting for me. But T3 is going to stay. He has information for the Republic. Navigation data, planetary scans, intelligence about the Sith and their dead emperor. And…he holds the story of what happened. His story. HK-47’s story. Atton’s story. Our stories. One day, someone might come looking. They might need to know. To see our mistakes, our sacrifices, and to understand the choices that we made.”

“Your story is not yet at its end,” Jolee said gently. “Neither is Revan’s. What does the rest of it hold?”

Her eyes tracked a circuit around the workshop before she pinned Jolee with her gaze again. “He said you were right, after that last battle. About the Dark Side. About love. Somehow, we found the narrow path to victory, through all of our choices. And—I did not expect to be here. What time we have left was bought at a great cost. We do not intend to waste it. But it concerns no one but Revan and I.”

They had earned that much. Jolee wondered how many in the galaxy would see them as heroes or villains, saviours or destroyers. “Don’t worry, kid. All of this is destined to be a footnote in history, and no one is interested in what happens after the great deeds are done.”

Meetra smiled. “That’s what we’re hoping.” She knelt beside T3-M4 so that she could embrace him. “You are the best little droid,” she said in a voice that was tight with tears. “We’re going to miss you, my friend. But Bao-Dur and Atris will take care of you.” T3 beeped his determination to carry out his duty before he emitted a mournful warble.

“Farewell, Meetra Surik. May the Force be with you.”

She rose, and through her tears, smiled as if there was some inside joke that Jolee had missed. “And with you, Jolee Bindo. Farewell.” When Jolee blinked, she was gone, and the door opening and closing was the only visible sign of her departure.

*

Meetra headed out of the temple at a brisk pace. It no longer looked like a war zone, and there had been the piping voices of children reciting a code that they would learn to live by. The Jedi would rise again.

They had arranged to meet at a nearby rooftop park, and Revan did not need to turn around to know that to know it was her footsteps crunching through the grass. It was a dreary spring day, an uncertain drizzle falling on them and shrouding the city with tendrils of mist, softening the hard edges and straight lines of the buildings that stretched to the horizon in every direction. The Coruscant city council gardeners had sown the field with a profusion of flowers that grew to a ankle-deep carpet of tiny purple and white heads, raindrops clinging to the petals. She came to a stop beside him and their hands found each other. The smile that crept over his face was the same one that he had worn when they met again on Dantooine, then outside that Sith shipyard, and with every time that they had found each other over the years—it was a celebration of the miracle that was every meeting after so many partings.

“Even in the rain, Coruscant’s rather pleasant as a tourist,” he observed.

“Our credit chips would disagree.” She brushed a thumb over the corner of his grin.

“Ah, that’s the life of poor droidheads. Save up for years to get here, live like a patrician for all of two days, then it’s back to thin soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and the greasy hands of our honest labours.” Unable to resist the invitation, he pulled her into a long kiss.

She broke it off despite Revan’s attempts to linger. “We’re in public,” she reminded him, even if they had the place to themselves apart from a few people hurrying past on the surrounding streets—as a rule, the fashionable people of Coruscant abhorred the rain ruining their hair and outfits. Now that they no longer needed to conceal their love, Revan enjoyed kissing her as and when he saw fit. Meetra found it both endearing and occasionally embarrassing, which added to the appeal from his perspective. “Is it done?”

“It is. And T3?”

“Yes.” They would both miss their loyal friend, but he would keep their stories safe. “Jolee Bindo was waiting for me in the droid workshop.”

“He saw through your super stealth? The old man is still full of surprises.” Revan laughed, but it was layered with more than just simple mirth.

“Revan—I asked about Juhani and Mira.”

His smile evaporated as he sensed her grief surfacing again. “Ah.” He drew Meetra out of the rain into the shade of a large tree, shrugging off his jacket to wrap her in it, then he rested his cheek against the warmth of her hair. “Is it what we feared?”

“Yes. Juhani was on Katarr. And Mira died as Kreia predicted. I’m sorry.”

“I see. She was a…proud, fierce servant of the light. And she was one of the strongest people that I ever had the honour of meeting.” He exhaled and held her a little closer. “I’m sorry, Meetra. About Mira.”

“As am I. But I believe what Kreia said. That she died with no regrets.” Her face was cool from the rain, the tears burning trails down her cheeks. In the end, Kreia had told her just one final lie: that the Force would watch for for ones such as Atton.

“So we walk on, carrying them with us.”

“Their memories never a burden.”

“They are light, after all.” Revan’s voice was wistful. Between them, they had much to mourn. This was their eulogy to the ones that they had lost. “What of Mission and Zaalbar?”

“Zaalbar leads his people, and Mission is working for Carth.” She placed her hand on Revan’s heart. “I told Jolee that you quote him regularly. It brought tears to his eyes, even if he would never admit it.”

Revan chuckled into her hair. “What could make an old man happier than being right?” He missed Jolee and his other friends as much as Meetra missed her Padawans and Atris. “Mee, while we’ve discussed this, has being here changed your thoughts about our path?”

“They need to grow the Order without my influence. They need to see the galaxy from different angles and to use that to shape the future. They cannot do that with me there.” So she chose exile again, albeit for a different reason. “And I must ask the same question of you.”

“I belong with you,” he said simply. “You will not be alone. You will never be alone again. I promised you that much.” Her arms tightened around him, and he said in a lighter tone, “It seems that the Jedi already have done away with some orthodoxy. The grandmaster is married and has a daughter. With Bastila, unless my intuition lies.” Revan was still a little surprised by this, although he was glad for them both.

“Mical and Bastila?” Meetra smiled. “I can see it.”

“He was far less grumpy than one would expect of a Jedi grandmaster, so I’d say it’s working out quite well.” He smoothed her damp hair away from her face. “Want to get married? Well, under one of our identities?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Sounds like a lot of paperwork.”

Revan’s shoulders shook as he tried to clamp down on a laugh. “Is that a no?”

“Whether or not our bond is recognised in the eyes of Republic law, I’m very sorry to have to inform you that you’re stuck with me, because someone has to keep you entertained and out of trouble.”

“Did I hear that right? Can I remind you who insisted on getting involved at the last planet?”

“Since when were we keeping a tally of—“ She cut herself off, lifting one finger as she checked the time. “We should go, or we’ll miss our flight.”

As the shuttle hit hyperspace, they both relaxed, no longer needing to conceal their presence. She rested her head on Revan’s shoulder and he removed his prosthesis with a sigh, then pressed his back into the seat, pain in lines of his face and sweat beading on his forehead. His absent right hand burned, as if the lightsaber was still searing through his arm and lightning was arcing through every finger. Meetra shared his pain, diluting his burden as she kissed his stump before pressing cool fingertips to it, numbing it with both simple touch and the Force. He brought his breathing under control and the pain dulled to a throb. It was a regular occurrence, but they were managing it as well as they could, and one could endure much when one was loved.

“So, where to next?” Revan asked, keen to distract himself. He dug around in his pack and produced a datapad, then brought up a page of job listings. There was plenty of work for two droidheads in a Republic that was rebuilding itself and erasing the ravages of war. It was something like atonement. It was one small step at a time in healing a wounded galaxy. “Once we pick up the ship, we’ll have a new coat of paint, a full tank of fuel and the galaxy at our fingertips.” They had left the Ebon Hawk at a small spaceport and caught a shuttle into Coruscant instead of taking the risk of flying in right under Carth’s nose.

It was indeed time to move on. Meetra still could not stay for more than a month in one place, lest she start drawing people to her again. Revan flicked through the job ads as she watched. “I’ve had enough of clearing minefields and living on ration bars for the moment. How about somewhere with good food for a change?”

“Good idea. You’re still rather grumpy when you get hungry.”

She groaned. “I don’t know how I put up with you for so many years.”

“Because I’m more fun than anyone else, remember?”

“Or maybe because I love you.”

“Could be. Let me check.” He leaned down for another kiss—warm, familiar, and quite well practiced by now. “Yes, must be the case. And I dare say that the feeling may be mutual.”

A few teenagers occupied the row behind them, and they made gagging sounds in unison. “Old people making out? That’s disgusting.”

Revan arched an eyebrow but refrained from comment, silently congratulating himself on his spectacular self control and asking her to admire his restraint. She laughed and whispered, “We’ll continue this conversation in private later.” These children could not remember a time when war ships lit up the sky, and for that they could tolerate some insolence.

His eyes drifted shut as the cabin lights dimmed, the fingers of his left hand interlaced through hers as he meditated. She tried to as well, albeit with the same amount of effort that she had once expended as a contrary apprentice on Dantooine and with about as much success. Instead, she watched their reflections in the viewport, thinking of the past, its wounds raw and bleeding again in this time and place. The past was immutable, even if they yearned for a different universe, one in which everyone lived to see the end of war, if such a present or future might have ever existed. But love lived on, even in loss. Atton’s pazaak deck was still on the Ebon Hawk even if she knew that she would never play another hand. He and the countless people that they had known and lost, some living and some dead, had shaped both of them and their paths through time. She and Revan would carry their deeds and names into the future.

Yet even if some wounds never healed, time still dulled the edge of pain. They remained. They were alive. And they could live, perhaps the life that Revan had dreamed of for her: without war, without the Jedi and the Sith alike, for the years that they had left to them, which were no more than a blink in the lifetime of a galaxy. And they would live that life together.

She turned to see him watching her with one eye cracked open comically. His mouth twitched into a grin. “You seem to be getting distracted, Mee.”

She smiled back at him. “You know, somehow, I still haven’t seen a binary star.”